The thing about a hand offered out of pity and a hand offered to help is that they look exactly the same to the receiver. In both cases, a hand is being thrust towards them, awaiting their response. The difference comes in how they perceive themselves. Do they feel worthy of genuine support or do they believe people only reach out because they feel bad for them? Paul Downs Colaizzo’s Brittany Runs A Marathon illustrates this question beautifully.
Often in movies when we see someone reject an offer of help, it results in the offerer upset they weren’t received better and then it just further escalates from there. It’s a movie trying to create conflict, but it often feels manufactured. As if the writer wrote the whole movie and went “Shit, I do not have enough conflict in this act to force the movie into the ending I badly want!”. What makes Brittany so special is that every person around her is offering their assistance and she rejects every one of them at some point in the movie, convinced it’s all out of pity, and every single one of them absorbs the blow. They don’t lash out. They don’t storm out and slam the door. They simply absorb her sharp edges, recognizing they were once like her, and hope she’ll come around. They’re not bummed that she didn’t take their offer; they’re bummed she didn’t find herself worthy of it. It’s a subtle distinction that makes a lot world of difference. And it makes this movie far more deeply empathetic than you’d ever expect.
Early in the movie, Brittany (Jillian Bell) runs into Seth (Micah Stock) in the middle of a 2-mile run as they’re both dying on a steep hill. He tells her he’s running because he choked in a potato sack race and couldn’t stand his young son’s disappointment. So he signed up for a 5k race 6 weeks later. “Why are you doing that to yourself,” Brittany asks, “you’ll lose. “
“You don’t do it to win it,” Seth says, breathless. “You do it to finish it.”
It’s just enough of a mindset shift for Brittany that she soon after signs up for the same 5k. Brittany and Seth run together and again they’re dying as a group of young kids pass them. “We’re going backwards”, she says. But they persist. As they get to the finish line, Seth runs into the arms of his husband, holding their son. Brittany looks around her. Everyone has someone. Everyone but her. She then spends most of the movie accepting and then pushing back against people, as if she lets her guard down just enough before reminding herself she’s not good enough. It leads her to push away so many people she has to fall into an old crutch of moving in with her sister. After a particularly bad blowup in which Brittany attacks a woman she feels threatened by, her brother-in-law (Lil Rel Howery) lofts it to her: “It was never about the marathon”, he says.
Late in the movie, Brittany finally does run this New York marathon. But she’s doing it alone. As she hits Mile 22, she comes down with a disastrous pain she’s convinced she can’t surmount. She wants to continue, but she’s slowly being persuaded by the medic to give up. It all looks like it’s over, like the movie will stretch into some kind of “You don’t have to run a whole marathon to be successful!” message until she hears a familiar scream. It’s her neighbor, Catherine (Michaela Watkins). Then further down is another scream. It’s Seth. And then it’s her brother-in-law. It’s everyone who offered a hand she once bit – sometimes more than once – and all they want for her is not just to finish the race, but to believe she is worthy enough to have friends who would wait until she got to the last 4 miles of the most punishing race she’s ever ran.
In the closing moments of the film, Brittany kisses a man she previously pushed away and goes for a run. But this time, as she strides down the street, you can see it all in her relaxed yet determined face: this isn’t about a marathon anymore; this is about self-acceptance and running because she genuinely enjoys it. It’s a face that’s ready for the next challenge because she feels worthy and has embraced a net that will catch her should she fall.
