By William Bibbiani

A sports movie is a powerful thing. After all, what is a story without conflict, and what is an athletic competition if not a confrontation? You don’t have to know anything about boxing to understand what boxing means to Rocky Balboa. You don’t need to study baseball stats to care what happens to the Rockford Peaches. Every character brings their drama with them onto the court, or the ring, or the diamond, or the dodecahedron, or wherever the hell they’re playing. A sports movie is a tale of inner struggle writ large, as a saga of impressive physical feats. Text and subtext, indivisible.

I don’t even like sports very much, but I love sports movies, and Kenji Iwaisawa’s “100 Meters” is a special kind of sports movie. It’s about athletes who use track and field — in particular, the 100-meter dash — to find their purpose in life. But instead of finding it, most of them get stuck in an existential quagmire. After all, you can’t run in a straight line for decades without eventually wondering why you bother. The runners in “100 Meters” aren’t trying to save a youth center or even prove a point. They don’t run because of contrivance. They run because they’re runners, and sometimes that horrifies them. Dear god, what if that’s all they are, and nothing else?