What does ultra-endurance athlete George Hood have in common with a world-class “joggler”–someone who juggles as he jogs great distances–and a guy with an uncanny passion for catching grapes in his mouth when they are hurled from long distances?
All are prominently featured in “Breaking and Entering,” a terrific tapestry that displays individual drive for stunning achievement and almost-neurotic acceptance.
At the helm is filmmaker Benjamin Fingerhut, whom I met in 2007 during an early stage of Hood’s Guinness World Record-breaking spree in spin cycling.
(Click here for prior posts about Hood’s record-setting exploits.)
In “Breaking and Entering,” Fingerhut captures the quirky and quixotic, the poignant and mundane, as a variety of individuals, including Guinness titan Ashrita Furman, strive to explain just what it is that propels and compels them toward their goals.
“Breaking and Entering”–so named because it tells the story of those trying to break world records and have their names entered into the Guinness World Record book–exercises great restraint in allowing the record-seekers, and those close to them, to tell their stories.
Among others who reviewed the film, the New York Times called it “a brisk and absorbing tour of the human ego.”
Though the film was completed about two years ago, it’s enjoying revived interest after a successful film festival circuit that included winning the audience award at the Jacksonville Film Festival and honorable mention at the St. Louis International Film Festival.
If you’re flying on Cathay Pacific Airlines in the near future, it will be aired for a few months coming up. On a broader scale, by October it will be “available to the masses,” Fingerhut stated recently, “either via television or digitally.”
Wherever you may come across “Breaking and Entering,” I highly recommend you invest the time to view the 90-(often extremely)-odd minute documentary.
In the end, Fingerhut offers ample room for the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions about the merits of such singular drive.
