The premise is enough to make you cringe: With the encouragement of his mother, a severely autistic man fulfills his quest to run a marathon. Cue tinkly music and cheesy ending, right? If you’re a skeptic like me, you avoid “special needs” movies at all costs. They are often intolerably maudlin and feature over-the-top performances that pander to an audience’s sense of pity. Of course, these films inevitably rack up fancy awards — “Marathon” won Grand Bell Movie Awards (Korea’s equivalent of the Oscars) for best picture and best actor — which is probably why the genre has such staying power. But even the best disability flicks can end up feeling like corny TV movies, with condescending messages about the strength of the human spirit.
On the surface, “Marathon” is no different — it’s an unabashed tearjerker that at times feels overdramatic and manipulative. But what separates “Marathon” from similar films is that it is less about an autistic boy’s athletic triumph than it is about a mother’s relationship with her son and the co-dependency that bonds them. In the lead roles, Kim Mi Sook and Cho Seung Woo are simply brilliant as mother and son. The debut of 34-year-old director Chung Yoon Chul, the film is balanced with intermittent flashes of humor and is expertly paced to avoid the pitfalls of other disability movies. At moments where inferior films might descend into pure sappiness, “Marathon” goes to unexpected places.
In addition to sweeping Korea’s major movie awards this year, “Marathon” has been the third biggest Korean film in 2005, drawing more than 5 million viewers. Here, then, is a closer look at the two characters that make the movie.
KOREA’S RAIN MAN
Since his debut as the fresh-faced male lead in Im Kwon Taek’s “Chunhyang” (2000), Cho Seung Woo has become one of Korea’s most promising actors in cinema and theater (and a top choice for advertisers, who voted him favorite male model in 2005). The 25-year-old has shown his versatility with lead roles in the musicals “Jekyll and Hyde” and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” Cho has also garnered attention for his high-profile relationship with another rising star, actress Kang Hye Jeong of “Old Boy.”
In “Marathon,” Cho plays Cho Won, a 20-year-old autistic man with the intellectual capacity of a child. Cho Won has undeveloped social skills and eccentric obsessions (jajjang myun, zebras and choco pies) that often lead to trouble. But he also has a talent for running, which his mother nurtures with hopes of giving her son’s life a greater purpose. She enlists the services of a washed-up former runner to help train her son to complete a full marathon.
Cho effectively portrays Cho Won’s boyish innocence and naďveté without turning the character into a sympathetic caricature (it probably helps that the actor already has a baby face). Though there are some cutesy moments, like Cho Won’s tendency to fart at inappropriate moments and his childlike way of communicating, Cho brings more to the character than a mere collection of twitches and idiosyncrasies. In interviews, Cho has said that he didn’t focus on foreign films about autism when preparing for the role, presumably to avoid basing his performance on another actor. Instead, Cho worked closely with Bae Hyung Jin, the autistic man whose story inspired the movie. The result is a realistic performance that carries the film.
