Lake of Fire

[MacGuffin]

Bad-boy director rekindles career with "Fire"
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Tony Kaye is back. The notoriously mercurial "American History X" director has re-emerged in the feature film world, shopping his acclaimed abortion documentary "Lake of Fire," which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, and a new thriller from script guru Robert McKee, "Madness."

That word has been associated with Kaye since he fought New Line Cinema and Edward Norton tooth and nail over final cut on "X" eight years ago. "I was in the clouds back then," Kaye admits. He's since patched things up with the studio, prepping a 10-year anniversary director's-cut DVD of the film and even discussing new projects with executives there. But it's "Madness" (which Kaye will produce with McKee and former agent Josh Klein, via his new outfit the Group Films) that's on his mind.

The film, which is set to be McKee's first produced theatrical feature, centers on a doctor who has cured and married one of his former patients. The pair run an insane asylum, but things turn deadly when the husband begins testing his cure for schizophrenia on the inmates.

"McKee is as mad as me," laughs the director. "He gave this to me 10 years ago and he doesn't give his scripts to anyone."

It's one of several projects Kaye says he has in the pipeline. There's also "Murderer's Row," a courtroom drama about capital punishment, and an untitled Carl Lund script about corporations financing a gambling operation based on no-holds-barred fights in prison.

Kaye has remained a superstar in the world of commercials. He's now off in China filming "mini-documentaries" on health care providers for Johnson & Johnson and will soon begin shooting a series of computer-animated spots for the United Arab Emirates on a new city that will fuse ancient Arabic iconography with futuristic architecture.

Kaye's music video work also is taking off. His Red Hot Chili Peppers video "Dani California" scored at this year's MTV Video Music Awards, and his new Johnny Cash video, "God's Gonna Cut You Down," features cameos from everyone from Justin Timberlake to Owen Wilson.

But whether old demons will resurface remains a big question mark for the director and a potential headache for any distributor who chooses to buy "Fire." Kaye spent some 16 years (and, he claims, $6 million-$8 million) on his graphic and thought-provoking two-and-a-half-hour examination of the abortion controversy, giving equal weight to both sides of the debate.

Just before its Toronto premiere, Kaye said he would continue changing the film, but after an enthusiastic response at the fest, he said he won't put any distributor in the same situation as New Line. "The film is what it is, and in a way it works," he said. "I could spend another year and a few million more dollars, and it wouldn't change what it is."

Most importantly, Kaye said, he just wants to get back in the game. "I'm 54 and I'm getting old now. I've got to have some presence in the filmmaking world," he said. "Gone are the days when I wanted to be a lunatic. I want to be seen as a responsible craftsman."

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: October 3rd, 2007 (limited)

Starring: Alan Dershowitz, Noam Chomsky, Nat Hentoff, Dallas Blanchard, Norma McCorvey 

Directed by: Tony Kaye

Premise: Filmmaker Tony Kaye, best known for "American History X," has worked on this documentary on abortion for 15 years. He shoots it in luminous black and white. He gives equal time to both sides, covering arguments from all extremes of the spectrum, as well as those at the center.

[Pubrick]

Tony Kaye

personal redemption: extremely fucking nigh.

[MacGuffin]

Tony Kaye, director of "Lake of Fire," discusses the making of his film

[MacGuffin]

Interviewing Tony Kaye by phone can make you sweat, if you're not prepared for what to expect. The famously eccentric director has a noticeable stammer. Earlier in life, it was so crippling that he would pass himself off as a non-English speaker in certain situations to avoid talking, and during an interview he will wrestle to get certain words out and occasionally stop speaking completely for long stretches, before realigning himself and continuing with his thought. Just as you're about to say something to break the silence, he's back on point. I once read about him unnerving some people during a creative meeting by banging his fist on the table, but after speaking with him, it's impossible not to imagine something like that being the result of raw frustration, not anger.

Not that he's lacking in anger. This is, of course, the director who was famously ousted from Hollywood ten years ago for warring with New Line Cinema over final cut of his debut film, American History X. Unable to get anywhere with the studio, Kaye took his grievances to the press, denouncing star Edward Norton as a "narcissistic dilettante" and New Line execs as a "crew of McDonald's chefs." He eventually filed a $275 million lawsuit against New Line and the DGA, became persona non grata, and disappeared. The door that slammed in Kaye's face has opened a crack recently, however. He just finished shooting (without incident) Black Water Transit, a crime-drama set in post-Katrina New Orleans and starring Laurence Fishburne and Brittany Snow, and he's celebrating the early October release of Lake of Fire, his documentary on abortion that's over 16 years in the making.


Ryan Stewart: You're still in post for Black Water Transit, right? How's that going?

Tony Kaye: Yeah, that's my big thing right now, yeah. It's going great. I'm very excited about it.

RS:Hurricane Katrina looms large over the film, I'm sure.

TK:Yeah, it takes place about three months afterwards, so you see some of the wreckage of the city. From a sort of materialistic standpoint, you see a little bit of wreckage, but what was lost in New Orleans was tragically lost. There's a whole community that was wiped out. That's not even there now. There's no ... I didn't shoot any 'hurricane stuff'.

RS:So it's in the background.

TK:Yeah. It's a drama between certain people, a series of stories that take place with interconnecting souls. It doesn't directly relate to the hurricane. The hurricane plays a part in their stories and people comment about it occasionally, but the story itself could have taken place at any time or anywhere. It plays out in that background, obviously, a little differently.

RS:I saw Lake of Fire last week. When you were conducting the interviews for that film, did the interview subjects try to sniff out your own point of view and convert you?

TK:Yeah, that's the very nature of talking about something like this. If you go on camera to talk about your views -- your views about abortion -- you are obviously trying to convert the person you're talking to or an audience. Convert them to your way of thinking. I could never be interviewed about my personal view on abortion, because I have mixed views, you know what I mean? I don't really have a view. That's part of the zeitgeist of the movie -- one minute someone is trying to tell you to be pro-life for that reason, and the next minute someone is trying to tell you to be pro-choice for that particular reason. By the time you get to the end of the film, you've really looked at a subject you thought you knew everything about and maybe you find that you didn't know everything about it. Maybe it re-confirms what you thought about it, or maybe you have a slightly different way of looking at it, but at least if you want to look at the subject of abortion and you want to see it presented in film form, I think it does a reasonable job of that.

RS:When you're shooting some of the pro-lifers -- one woman especially, near the beginning -- you tend to push in very tight with the camera, all the way into an extreme close-up. Why do you do that?

TK:My close-ups on the human face are very close. I think filmmaking is looking into people's eyes. That's what it's all about. So whenever I do an interview, I will always come away with a very, very tight shot. I don't remember exactly the shot you mean, but it's a way that I particularly work, you know?

RS:I believe she was a congresswoman, it was right at the top of the film. It struck me as almost hostile, like you're squinting at what she's saying, or distrustful of her honesty. As she explains her viewpoint, the camera zooms in closer, closer, closer.

TK:No, no, purely framing. That's just a visual thing. I'm not commenting about anything. It's a documentary. I am not making a comment.

RS:You also shot some really gruesome abortion and post-abortion footage in this film -- how did you prepare your film crew for shooting stuff like that?

TK:Well, I work with a very small crew. I shoot my own film, you know? It was a mind-altering moment for me. I had a sound person and an assistant camera person ... there were only three of us in the room with the doctor and the patient and then with the doctor afterwards. I don't really ... everyone was aware of what we were going in to see. I didn't really say anything.

RS:Did you find that stuff shocking?

TK:It was shocking to me. I think it'd be shocking to anybody, but I'm removed -- I'm in a zone when I'm filmmaking. I focus entirely on being in the right place with the camera and making sure the sound is being recorded well, thinking about what questions I'm asking in a situation like that. The performances, the coverage, the angles ... as I say, I was in an altered state. It's a pretty shocking thing.

RS:How much footage did you shoot for this film?

TK:Oh, you know, when you shoot for as long as I shot -- not that I was shooting every day for sixteen years -- but I shoot a lot of film anyway, for anything. I shoot a lot of film even if it's in a day. Yeah, it started as a seven hour cut. I wanted to do a television piece, or do a series of DVDs.

RS:You planned for it to be on TV?

TK:I didn't plan it like that, but there's so much footage, so much interesting stuff, that it's a shame to not ever let it see the light of day, you know?

RS:I was surprised that the interview subject that grabbed me the most was Nat Hentoff, representing the pro-life liberals. No matter how defensible his position might be, it occupies such a marginal position in the greater debate.

TK:Nat Hentoff is certainly a marvelous individual voice in his own right, aside from his thinking here. He's very unique. Not only unique in the fact that he's unique, but his opinion and where he's coming from is unique, within the characters that I filmed.

RS:Right. There are lots of religious zealots in the film, though -- would you say the subject of the film is extremism, as much as it is abortion?

TK:Yeah. It's about a lot of things. It's about extremism, it's about reactionary behavior, it's about a lot of things. I don't even know half of what it's about, you know?

RS:There's a scene near the beginning, at a demonstration, where a pro-life guy is standing there preaching to his own little choir of followers. It reminded me immediately of that scene in American History X, where Norton is giving a speech to his troops. I'm sure X would have clicked in my mind even if I had no idea who was directing this documentary. I was wondering if there was an intentional relation between those two scenes.

TK:Well, I guess he looks a bit like Edward Norton, that guy. [Laughs] I don't know, I mean somebody giving a speech ... I don't know. I like long monologue kind of things anyway, but that was there to help the structure of the film. It begins as a pro-life film. He really kicks the story off, you know.

RS:I actually saw lots of parallels to American History X; extremism as a subject, the stark black and white 35mm, other similarities. Is it unfair to you to make those comparisons, since you so vehemently disowned the release cut of X?

TK:Well, I'm not really the same person now as I was when I had all the disputes over American History X. I was very reactionary. I was very reactionary in my manner and my attitudes and very egotistical. I'm not really the same person anymore. I'm very proud of my involvement in American History X. I think it could be better, but anything could be better. Lake of Fire could be better, you know? Sure, there's bound to be similarity because the director is the same person, and as I'm shooting the film as well, there's going to be even more of ... it's not only the choice of subject matter, it's the camera style. Filmmaking is really about what comes out of the camera and what you do with it afterwards. That's really what filmmaking boils down to.

RS:Are you still in the process of putting together Humpty Dumpty, the documentary about the making of American History X?

TK:Yes, Humpty Dumpty is a whole other kettle of fish. That's a very personal film about my own descent into madness. Descent into ego and madness and reactive behavior. New Line really likes it and they want to release it. In a way, Humpty Dumpty is sort of what American History X might have been. We're doing, aside from a small theatrical release on Humpty Dumpty, we're doing a DVD release of a digitally-remastered American History X. Humpty Dumpty will go in the same box.

RS:Are you doing new interviews for it?

TK:Yes. I haven't gotten an interview with Edward Norton yet. I need to get an interview with Edward Norton. But I've been shooting Humpty Dumpty for seven or eight years.

RS:What's the holdup with Norton? Do you still speak with him?

TK:No. No. It's only recently that I've become approachable, in terms of actors. Actors wouldn't come anywhere near me a couple of years ago, not only because of my antics and my behavior on American History X, but also with my Marlon Brando .... I don't know if you know anything about that.

RS:Lying for a Living.

TK:Yeah. I got off to a pretty rocky start.

RS:So you're making up for lost time now? Seems like you're eager to get back into mainstream fiction features.

TK:Absolutely. I'm happy to be fully immersed in narrative story-telling, narrative fictional film. I'm very happy to be back in the business again and to be of sound mind.

RS:And you won't lose anything by dialing down your eccentricities?

TK:No, to be honest with you, I'm not very eccentric in all honesty. A lot of it was really an act. A lot of my heroes, the directors I really admire, were all lunatics. So I just thought that, to do good work like they did, I should be a lunatic too, you know?

RS:Do you know what the next feature is, after Black Water Transit?

TK:I don't know exactly what I'm gonna do. I have a few things on the horizon. I've got something I've written, there's a project called Madness that was written by Robert McKee, the famous screenwriting teacher. He's written a script I kind of like. Then there's another film called Wild Horses with Mickey Rourke and Bob Dylan and Val Kilmer, which I'm looking at, and then there's another film called Murderer's Row, which is about capital punishment. It's written by a judge and I'm kind of intrigued by that. I'd really like to make my own stuff, but the thing that I've written is huge and I don't know if I can get the financing on that just yet, so.

RS:Is there anything you could be as passionate about as Lake of Fire -- passionate enough to spend that many years working on it?

TK:There's a couple of things. I'm doing a documentary film about the Berg family that started the Kabbalah Centre, and I'm very interested in doing a film about money as well. It would interest me because I was working for the Enron company, doing commercials for Enron just before they went bust. I shot a lot of footage of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, talking about the company and why it worked and all these kinds of things. I'd like to make a film about money, a documentary film about how money really works in the bigger picture. Industrialists and capitalists and people who don't care about money and really about being obsessed with money or not having money. Rich parts of the world, poor parts of the world -- fiscal flow. I don't know anything about money, I'm such a terrible businessman. I don't really have any money, but a lot of money's gone through my hands. I think that could be a really interesting film.

[Pubrick]

RS:And you won't lose anything by dialing down your eccentricities?

TK:No, to be honest with you, I'm not very eccentric in all honesty. A lot of it was really an act. A lot of my heroes, the directors I really admire, were all lunatics. So I just thought that, to do good work like they did, I should be a lunatic too, you know?

RS:Do you know what the next feature is, after Black Water Transit?

TK:I don't know exactly what I'm gonna do. I have a few things on the horizon. I've got something I've written, there's a project called Madness that was written by Robert McKee, the famous screenwriting teacher. He's written a script I kind of like. Then there's another film called Wild Horses with Mickey Rourke and Bob Dylan and Val Kilmer, which I'm looking at, and then there's another film called Murderer's Row, which is about capital punishment. It's written by a judge and I'm kind of intrigued by that. I'd really like to make my own stuff, but the thing that I've written is huge and I don't know if I can get the financing on that just yet, so.

RS:Is there anything you could be as passionate about as Lake of Fire -- passionate enough to spend that many years working on it?

TK:There's a couple of things. I'm doing a documentary film about the Berg family that started the Kabbalah Centre, and I'm very interested in doing a film about money as well. It would interest me because I was working for the Enron company, doing commercials for Enron just before they went bust. I shot a lot of footage of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, talking about the company and why it worked and all these kinds of things. I'd like to make a film about money, a documentary film about how money really works in the bigger picture. Industrialists and capitalists and people who don't care about money and really about being obsessed with money or not having money. Rich parts of the world, poor parts of the world -- fiscal flow. I don't know anything about money, I'm such a terrible businessman. I don't really have any money, but a lot of money's gone through my hands. I think that could be a really interesting film.

that line i highlighted really cracked me up.

and of particular interest, as always, is discussion about his future projects in the last couple of questions. i hope he gets to make that money movie, i have a feeling it will be his last though.

[MacGuffin]

'Lake of Fire' takes camera into abortion clinics
Director Tony Kaye strives for balance in a jolting documentary.
Source: Los Angeles Times

DIRECTOR Tony Kaye says he was forever changed witnessing the second-trimester abortion. Audiences who see Kaye's new documentary "Lake of Fire" may very well share the British filmmaker's reaction.

Nearly two decades in the works, "Lake of Fire" is Kaye's epic look at one of the most personal -- and sometimes violently contentious -- issues of the day: reproductive rights. But rather than fill his 2 1/2 -hour film with nothing but activists, academics and politicians, Kaye goes into the American clinics where the divisive procedures are performed.
 
No matter where people stand on the issue, the abortion Kaye presents just 20 minutes into the film will certainly become indelible to many: Concerned that he leave no fragments of an aborted fetus in his patient's uterus, a doctor reassembles the body parts -- tiny feet, arms, a head with a clearly discernible face -- into a nearly intact whole. And the camera never blinks.

What sounds like antiabortion agitprop is, in the context of Kaye's film, something very different. "Lake of Fire" is Kaye's attempt to challenge point-blank the lines of reasoning both for and against abortion rights.

It is "a difficult film," the 55-year-old director says, "a brutally exhausting thing to watch." But as he sees it, "Lake of Fire" had to be that tough: If he didn't show those minuscule body parts, he also couldn't show the photograph of a woman who killed herself trying to end a pregnancy with a coat hanger.

Documentary film is in the midst of an artistic and box- office renaissance. But Kaye isn't like most documentary directors; his film has no obvious agenda and he's not using it to make a political statement. ThinkFilm, which acquired Kaye's film after it premiered at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, is releasing "Lake of Fire" very slowly, premiering it in New York last week and in Los Angeles on Friday.

"I went into the project knowing full well that I wanted to make a piece about abortion that was not propagandist in any way," says Kaye, a prominent commercial and music video director whose last feature film was 1998's troubled drama "American History X," on which he famously clashed with New Line Cinema, the Directors Guild of America and star Edward Norton. "I needed, in a journalistic sense, to enthusiastically explore all of the arguments."

That exploration, which Kaye personally financed at a cost of almost $7 million, ultimately consumed 16 years. And Kaye says he still isn't done. "To be honest, I'm still not finished. But I had to get on with other things."

The title is drawn from antiabortion activist John Burt's description of the hell awaiting the people he believes are on the wrong side of the issue. "It must be like lava coming out of a volcano," Burt says, "except there's people in it, and they're burning and burning and burning."

Although Kaye interviews more dispassionate speakers -- including journalist Nat Hentoff arguing against abortion and linguist Noam Chomsky supporting a woman's right to choose -- he clearly is drawn to people on the fringes of the debate, chiefly religious activists who feel they are called by God to demonize and even kill abortion providers.

Mark Urman, the head of U.S. theatrical for ThinkFilm, says the inclusion of the fringe voices serves a complementary storytelling purpose. "The film is not nearly as much about the issue of abortion as it is about the way our society deals with issues," Urman says. "The film in a very symmetrical way deals with the extremes on both ends of the spectrum."

Because Kaye filmed for so many years, some of "Lake of Fire's" most dramatic developments unfolded as the documentary was being assembled. For example, activist Paul Hill is shown protesting outside a Florida clinic, opining that even a foul-mouthed blasphemer should be executed "because that's what the Bible teaches." Soon thereafter, we meet Dr. John Bayard Britton, an abortion doctor at the Pensacola Ladies Center who wears a homemade bulletproof vest. "If I don't do it," he says of providing abortions, "it probably won't get done. So I do it."

But just a few minutes later in the film, a picture of Britton's body fills the screen; he was shot to death by Hill, a former Presbyterian minister. (Hill was subsequently executed for the 1994 murder.)

"It really does track like a narrative, a fictional piece," Kaye says from New York, having recently completed filming the crime drama "Black Water Transit" in New Orleans. "I shot the killer, I shot one of the people he killed, I filmed at the place where the killings took place. . . . I still look at this stuff, and it's amazing how it played out."

Procedures detailed

LITTLE in the black-and-white "Lake of Fire," though, is as compelling as the two abortion procedures Kaye records. The first, the second-trimester procedure, left Kaye "a different person when I came out of that room. . . . But it had to be in there. When I decided to make this film, and I started making it, I never dreamed in a million years I'd ever be shooting stuff like that. I'd never dreamt I would get so close up to anything. I just didn't know what the journey would yield."

Yet Kaye knew he wanted to find a patient and a clinic that trusted him and his crew enough to let them spend time with her as she is being counseled and then has an abortion. (The identity of the film's first abortion patient isn't revealed.) It took five years of searching, but when Kaye met Stacy, who volunteered to let Kaye follow her as she undergoes the film's second abortion procedure, he realized he had found the film's final act.

Physically abused by a former boyfriend, poor and previously treated for depression, Stacy doesn't consider herself ready for motherhood. "It's just not a good time in my life," she tells a counselor at the clinic before she climbs onto the operating table.

Since Stacy's quick dilation and curetage is conducted in her first trimester, the physical evidence of its aftermath is not as manifest as its emotional toll. Soon after the abortion, Stacy collapses in tears. "I just need to go home and get on with my life," she says quietly. "I knew I made the right choice, but it's not easy."

Kaye won't say how making the movie altered his thinking about abortion. But it's clear he respects both sides in the debate.

"It is one of the very rare arguments in life, I think, where everyone is right," he says. "It's kind of like playing chess. The person who plays better in a game of chess will win. But with the argument of abortion, you can justify all the arguments as right."

[Pubrick]

best documentary feature.

[mogwai]

so when are you two going to see this one together?

[pete]

he sounds real torn from the interview.  most of the time when the filmmakers say they have no agenda, they usually sound very dubious - like gus van sant's elephant or the lady who made Jesus Camp.  however, this guy sounded genuinely torn between the arguments, maybe as torn as the guy who made capturing the friedmans.  good for tony kaye, it's about time he makes a good film.

[w/o horse]

The film is compassionately pro-choice.  It's also frightening and brutal.  Inherant in the debate is skepticism about the decision you make regarding abortion and the film is very much about that terror.  The horror of being in the clinic, being outside the clinic, lives lost on both sides, the fanatic right-wings who shoot doctors, the scared woman in post-op.  There are images and words spoken in the film that are just spine tingling and I couldn't help but leave with a real sense of dread about the whole thing.  There were literally moments when I covered my eyes.

[Stefen]

This is fucking ridiculous.

I wanna see Kaye make a romantic comedy, but one where he beats up and berates the actors on set Peckinpah style.

[B.C. Long]

David O. Russell beat him to it.

[cron]

Painful though it was, Lake of Fire is a film I had to make

My head was filled with Vincent Van Gogh, George Grosz, The Police, Sting, Dire Straights, Mark Knopfler, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola, Marlon Brando, "What happened to the Beatles?" and becoming a film director.

It was 1978 when my girlfriend told me she was pregnant. How cool was that, I thought. Then about an hour after finding out the great news, I found out she wanted to have an abortion. She was not ready to be a parent. This was a bit of a tragedy, I figured. The first real one I'd had to deal with - OK, my grandmother had died the year before, I was going bald, the Beatles had split up, I was a crappy soccer player... but this was the real thing. My task now was to be supportive, take her to a hospital and take her home later.

I did these things. We separated two years later. Ten years later, and now a successful director of television commercials and music videos, I moved to America with my then wife and our first daughter. My intention was to make films. The minute I set foot in America, I became aware of the intensity of the abortion debate there - it was the single most divisive issue.

I decided to make a movie about abortion - the definitive movie about abortion, including the debate, the procedure and whatever else happens along the way.

I tried to write a story. Nothing came. I tried to find an existing script. Nothing appeared; nothing that could portray all the sides of the discourse. I'd seen the work of Humphrey Jennings, Fredrick Wiseman, Albert Maysels, Errol Morris and, of course, Michael Moore. So I thought, OK, I'll make a documentary about the issue. A cinematic, investigative documentary for the big screen. I had big ambitions. I do not feel I have achieved exactly what I set out to. I set out to visit the stars; I think I hit the roof. I will go back to Lake of Fire in two or three years, but this is where it is now.

My own dilemma in 1978 informed the making of film - I wondered where my aborted child had gone. It's not my place in this world of ours to enforce my wishes upon anybody - that was my sentiment then. It's the mother's choice to do with her body as she wishes. Yup, I'm pro-choice for those reasons, and supportive of those very reasons. I have three more children now, and another arriving in December, but over the years I found myself continually looking for my aborted child, who would be 29 now. Maybe the soul of my first child was meant to be aborted so I could spend 17 years and $6m, and go bankrupt, making Lake of Fire to try to figure out what we're all doing here in the first place - what life is really all about.

I've got lost many times - I've fought Hollywood harder than any director in the history of the cinema to try to protect my artistic vision. In my battle over American History X I learnt a protectiveness that stemmed directly from being so autonomous in the making of Lake of Fire, which I funded on my own.

Lake of Fire is a film that redefines the word controversy - you see with your own eyes, like I did, a baby being aborted. For good reason, for sound, intelligent reason. I don't agree with abortion in principle, but you have to have a place, a decent place, for a woman to go and have the procedure. Because otherwise, with where the world currently resides, poor women will just perform the procedure upon themselves and die. I've seen it in South America where abortion is illegal.

I am fascinated with all things America. I grew up watching American films and television in the 50s. I love America, and I love the fact that abortion is discussed so deeply there. This film would have been impossible to make anywhere else. The world should talk and talk and talk about the issue of abortion, but only America does.

Finally, to recap and quote Noam Chomsky from the movie itself: "In future technologies we will discover that there is indeed cells of life in the palms of our hands ... So abortion lies somewhere between washing our hands and murdering your three-year-old."
-Tony Kaye


that part about the soul of his child almost made me shed a tear, instead i sneezed. 

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

This movie was just amazing.  I was starting to think that American History X was some one hit that burned out, I didn't really know what to expect next, if to expect anything from the director.  Then this comes out of nowhere, at least to me.

I've been disturbedand shocked by movies before, but pretty much anything I'd seen before pales in comparison to having seen two abortions performed on film.  That imagery used by pro-life to show the horrors of abortion kind of desensitizes you to it almost, but seeing all the paperwork leading up to it, the confidence the woman has and then seeing her break down was just as, if not more powerful than seeing and hearing the fetus being sucked out of her and displayed on a grate.

What made matters worse was how beautifully the film was shot.  Even in black and white, it was so appealling to watch, but simultaneously so difficult to focus on.

I'm not sure who I could really suggest this movie to, but that doesn't detract from how important it is to just be seen in general.

Also, as a side note, I saw Loves of a Blonde for the first time earlier today in a History of Cinema class, when a friend in the class asked if I wanted to go see a movie since he could get me a free ticket at the theater.  I find these two movies do not mix well in the same day.