Run to See "Running with Speed"

Good evening friends,

In the interest of ensuring I get at least one post written this month, I'm going to write a quick little post about a very charming documentary I very much enjoyed:

"Running with Speed" (2023) documents the long history and soaring victories of video game speed runners.  Speed runners are competitive gamers who use a combination of intricate maneuvering, insider knowledge, hacks and exploitable glitches, and an inordinate amount of practice to winnow down the time it takes to complete vintage video games.

The film, perhaps very ironically, has a surprisingly long run time at 2 hours and 28 minutes, but it's structured in a way that made it easy to settle into.  By sub-dividing the documentary into chapters that both chronicle the evolution of the speed running movement as well as profiling individual speed runners, the audience gets a thorough, intimate introduction to the lives and events that shaped speed running into a surprisingly ambitious and productive fundraising juggernaut.  The additional advantage of this format  is that it makes this admittedly lengthy movie compatible with the life of a parent of two young children who might need to watch movies in installments if they are to be watched at all.

"Running with Speed" is very reminiscent of other movies I've loved before, including "The Last Blockbuster" (2020), "The Perfect Bid: The Contestant who Knew Too Much" (2017), and "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" (2007).  These films each share common elements that are basically guaranteed to win me over: they profile sweet, sincere, nerdy people with deep dedication to their highly niche interests which we get to learn all sorts of delightfully fiddly details about, and they often celebrate their subjects by detailing their triumphs and resilience in the face of a society that is moving on from the vocations or hobbies dear to their hearts.  They offer a unique distillation of nostalgia, heart, and exhilaration in a neat, dorky little package.

Documentaries like these are both genuinely inspiring and an oftentimes much-needed antidote to misanthropy.  Their subjects achieve great things (in the context of their interests, at least) in the face of adversity.  Their heroes often demonstrate virtues like collaboration, grit, honesty, kindness, and guileless enthusiasm--virtues that are all too rare in a society typified by toxic individualism, destructive competition, insufficiently challenged obfuscation, and cynicism.  (Seriously, any day of the week I would gladly spend 2 1/2 hours hearing from people who are unabashedly in love with their hobbies or jobs, even if I have absolutely no shared experience with the things they're into, than people who lack the passion and vulnerability to let themselves just be excited about something.)  Even more simply, these films are illustrative of the beautiful, quirky vastness of humankind.  There are so many things to build a life around--it's incredible!  

Movies like these truly make me fall in love with people all over again.

"Running with Speed" is available on a variety of streaming platforms.  I gave it a 5, and I highly recommend it!

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