MARATHON MAN

Another film produced in the 70s by Robert Evans and directed by Oscar-winning director John Schlesinger that brought another psychologically paranoid edge was Marathon Man, which depicts not a champion race for glory, but a race for escape from the suspicious and sinister activities of the urban landscapes that ordinary people can least suspect. Like other chilling mystery-filled thrillers like Blue Velvet, in which ordinary young men with a clean streak are thrown into a situation that never should have concerned them to begin with, Marathon Man takes Dustin Hoffman into the role of a nervous grad student named Babe who tries to keep his cool through running but can’t break his sweat with the unease and insecurity that fills his mind. His flashbacks of a traumatic childhood and his nervous energy displayed around his peers and teachers makes him very tense, despite his ambition to become a historian and face his past. When his brother Doc returns from a secret operation as a Division agent, curiosity arouses him but he’s never filled in on the trouble until he is pulled against his will into a frightening web of conspiracy and crime and faces the most chilling human being of absolute evil, Dr. Szell.
Just like Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth in Blue Velvet, Laurence Olivier as Szell is another example of a veteran actor who entered a different generation with a breakthrough role as a creepily disturbed menace, but portrays him with a delicate and soft-voiced persona of an old dentist who takes his time before acting. As he is observing Babe strapped to a chair under a light, he calmly and repeatedly asks “Is it safe?” without shouting or slapping him in the face, but merely taking his time before beginning a painful dental operation. The brutality of this operation isn’t disturbing just for how cruel it is but because of Szell’s sophisticated mannerisms about carrying out the procedure, making him humanly scary in how he looks in his glasses and long coat and tie with a stern yet soft expression. His stern and authoritative look is one that people would expect a Nazi to appear as, but in a very subdued gentleman-like fashion without much predictability. At other times, he shows his vulnerabilities whenever he appears afraid and paranoid that his plans to recover stolen jewels may not turn out as he hoped, making him all the more desperate in asking “Is it safe?”. The fear of failure and of being caught also arises from the uneasy look in his face as the camera looks at the vast population of Jews in New York City he passes by on the streets, as he is being forced to look at the faces of people he hated and helped in trying to eradicate from the world.
The paranoia of the villain is almost as equal as that of the hero, providing an even match between the two adversaries and building up to the moment where they will confront each other in a stand-off they hadn’t expected. Hoffman keeps up with Babe’s nervousness the entire film as he dreads the fate Szell and his co-conspirators have in store for him and is forced to run for his life through the dark dimly lit streets with the bad guys on his track. The fast pace and the camera tracking of Babe running from a right angle with the dim lights of the city in the background makes the sequence look like a psychedelic episode of paranoia and heavy breathing for a young ordinary man who is no longer running for the exercise but for survival. It keeps the tension heated figuratively and literally as this long run is heated for Babe but also for the audience as they run with him to see the outcome. The jittery chilling score by Michael Small be heard creeping from beginning to end to give a sense of doom, even in moments where Babe is just running for the fitness, to foreshadow the desperate time for which he will have to run for survival in a frightening occasion. His life of trying to remain in the comforts of running for exercise and his studies is no longer the issue as his life is turned upside down in a terrifying direction.
Throughout this film, the heat of running hard with the feet and with the mind is brimmed with a frightening edge that makes an urban landscape more eerie and maze-like to find one’s self in deep trouble when they least expect it. The fact that Babe’s life will never be the same as he faces his limits and his demons of the past brings the notion of psychological turmoil home to the viewer in areas where they feel safe and will leave them sweating and gasping for air from racing through an air of darkness that has come for them against their will.