- Faithful to their controversial docu films, Th!nkFilm has picked up worldwide rights Lake of Fire. Featured at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, the self-financed black-and-white film is Tony Kaye’s long awaited follow-up to his debut feature length film American History X.The 2 1/2-hour doc look at the development since Roe v. Wade, the United States has been deeply divided on the issue of abortion. In that landmark case, an unmarried woman was refused an abortion in Texas. The judicial challenge that followed won women the right to legal abortions. Proponents and opponents have lined up on either side of the issue ever since, launching verbal abuse – and worse – at each other. As the religious right has increasingly flexed its power, the issue has become even more divisive – and violent. Interviewing a range of individuals – from fundamentalist Christians to professors of sociology, philosophy, and bioethics; from
- 2/20/2007
- IONCINEMA.com
TORONTO -- While two and a half hours may sound like a long time for a docu on one of America's most endlessly rehashed issues, the end credits may roll in Lake of Fire before viewers tire of it. Smart, visually appealing, and consistently engaging, it finds fresh ways of addressing a debate that is, thanks to new state laws and changes in the Supreme Court, once again becoming unavoidable. It has the right stuff to rise above the non-fiction pack, both in commercial terms and in the public discussion, even if the subject's fatigue factor will keep some potential viewers away.
The film was shot over at least a dozen years, stretching back to 1993 demonstrations marking the 20th anniversary of Roe V. Wade. Director-cinematographer Tony Kaye makes a choice in handling video footage from various points in the medium's development -- he presents all of it in black-and-white -- that not only smartly lends it some uniformity but increases its visual appeal and fits the subject's gravitas. In more recent footage, high-def compositions have a level of artfulness echoed in the film's other production values (ranging from highbrow modern classical music on the soundtrack to credits by typography star Jonathan Barnbrook).
It is not the "definitive work" some have claimed it to be (as if a single film could cover this territory comprehensively), but what it does, it does exceptionally well. After initially appearing to be a comprehensive examination of the moral, ethical, and political sides of the abortion question, it eventually finds too much material to ignore in one arena -- leaning heavily toward the portraiture of the most extreme factions of the anti-abortion movement, with footage of rallies and accounts of violence against abortion providers.
There's more to the film than that, and Lake is most exciting when talking to dispassionate thinkers whose own sympathies are sometimes too complex to attribute one way or another. Noam Chomsky, predictably, offers a nuanced view, acknowledging a set of "conflicting values" in which, as Alan Dershowitz puts it, "everybody is right." Chomsky is one of the left-leaning speakers in the film who is most generous in considering the anti-abortion position, although he also draws a line in the sand, affirming that abolitionists can only be taken seriously when they have a consistency of viewpoint: The "seamless garment," which Nat Hentoff (a liberal atheist who opposes abortion rights) explains as the application of pro-life thought to war, capital punishment, and oppression. Viewers wanting a truly comprehensive investigation will wish for more voices like Hentoff's: rational people who can defend their position in terms that all American accept (without, for instance, insisting on America's getting "back to the Bible").
But Kaye instead devotes his remaining time to a heartbreaking and viscerally disturbing first-hand look at abortion. We see it in completely explicit clinical shots, watching "fetal parts" -- half-intact head, arms, and legs -- as they are extracted from a woman's body and reassembled in a lab tray; and we follow one woman from the time she enters the clinic, through pre-procedure screening, through the operation and the counseling that follows. This footage is graphic and emotional enough to give pause to partisans on both sides of the debate: both those who would like to argue about "choice" as an abstract matter for bumper-stickers and political rallies, and those who delude themselves and their audiences into thinking that any woman can go through this procedure casually, unmindful of its ramifications.
LAKE OF FIRE
No U.S. Distributor
Anonymous Content
Credits:
Director: Tony Kaye
Producer: Tony Kaye
Executive producers: Yan Lin Kaye, Steve Golin, David Kanter
Director of photography: Tony Kaye
Music: Anne Dudley
Editor: Peter Goddard
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 152 minutes...
The film was shot over at least a dozen years, stretching back to 1993 demonstrations marking the 20th anniversary of Roe V. Wade. Director-cinematographer Tony Kaye makes a choice in handling video footage from various points in the medium's development -- he presents all of it in black-and-white -- that not only smartly lends it some uniformity but increases its visual appeal and fits the subject's gravitas. In more recent footage, high-def compositions have a level of artfulness echoed in the film's other production values (ranging from highbrow modern classical music on the soundtrack to credits by typography star Jonathan Barnbrook).
It is not the "definitive work" some have claimed it to be (as if a single film could cover this territory comprehensively), but what it does, it does exceptionally well. After initially appearing to be a comprehensive examination of the moral, ethical, and political sides of the abortion question, it eventually finds too much material to ignore in one arena -- leaning heavily toward the portraiture of the most extreme factions of the anti-abortion movement, with footage of rallies and accounts of violence against abortion providers.
There's more to the film than that, and Lake is most exciting when talking to dispassionate thinkers whose own sympathies are sometimes too complex to attribute one way or another. Noam Chomsky, predictably, offers a nuanced view, acknowledging a set of "conflicting values" in which, as Alan Dershowitz puts it, "everybody is right." Chomsky is one of the left-leaning speakers in the film who is most generous in considering the anti-abortion position, although he also draws a line in the sand, affirming that abolitionists can only be taken seriously when they have a consistency of viewpoint: The "seamless garment," which Nat Hentoff (a liberal atheist who opposes abortion rights) explains as the application of pro-life thought to war, capital punishment, and oppression. Viewers wanting a truly comprehensive investigation will wish for more voices like Hentoff's: rational people who can defend their position in terms that all American accept (without, for instance, insisting on America's getting "back to the Bible").
But Kaye instead devotes his remaining time to a heartbreaking and viscerally disturbing first-hand look at abortion. We see it in completely explicit clinical shots, watching "fetal parts" -- half-intact head, arms, and legs -- as they are extracted from a woman's body and reassembled in a lab tray; and we follow one woman from the time she enters the clinic, through pre-procedure screening, through the operation and the counseling that follows. This footage is graphic and emotional enough to give pause to partisans on both sides of the debate: both those who would like to argue about "choice" as an abstract matter for bumper-stickers and political rallies, and those who delude themselves and their audiences into thinking that any woman can go through this procedure casually, unmindful of its ramifications.
LAKE OF FIRE
No U.S. Distributor
Anonymous Content
Credits:
Director: Tony Kaye
Producer: Tony Kaye
Executive producers: Yan Lin Kaye, Steve Golin, David Kanter
Director of photography: Tony Kaye
Music: Anne Dudley
Editor: Peter Goddard
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 152 minutes...
- 9/18/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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