On DVD:

Lake of Fire

This review was originally published in Webster University's The Journal November 2007

“Lake of Fire” is British director Tony Kaye’s engrossing 2006 documentary that covers the issues surrounding the American woman’s right to have their child aborted safely and professionally. It has been in production for 15 years, ever since Bill Clinton took his new job in the Oval Office, and after touring the Toronto and Cannes Film Festivals, has finally gotten limited release.

While being unique as the only feature length film to date to seriously tackle the issue in a broad, encompassing scope, as well as having been filmed while much of the turmoil was in progress, “Lake of Fire” falls short of being entirely inclusive as some might hope it to be.

Early on, Kaye shows segments of footage from pro-life/pro-choice rallies all across the country, some of them shocking in their extremity. While mingling with the protesters, we are first introduced to some of the brilliant thinkers of our time, including Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz; to whom Kaye returns for elucidation several times throughout the film.

After about two hours (yep, it’s a long one — 152 min.), we know about all there is to know about the two extremes on each side of the debate, and with some input from more moderate voices such as the Catholics for Free Choice political organization, Kaye seems to conclude the discourse with a sentiment by Chomsky. In such an emotionally charged debate, probably more so than any other, the MIT professor emeritus explains how some decisions must eventually be made on “where human life begins … somewhere between the skin cells you wash off your hand in the bathroom and the extermination of an innocent 3-year old.” The range of possibilities, like all the varying opinions, is as vast as all the oceans put together, and Kaye, in a brilliant stroke of Cinéma-vérité, closes the film with an unsettlingly candid, yet emotionally complex visit to the abortion clinic.

One may recall Kaye’s 1998 film “American History X” that travels down similarly windy roads of acute beliefs and emotions. The difference here between fiction and non-fiction is made more severe by the fact that according to the press packet, he failed when originally trying to develop a fictional script on the issue, but realized in the early nineties that nothing could cover all that needed to be.

The most shocking reaction to this film would be the snubbing of it on account of the film not spending enough time on every single perspective. True, it may be that any moderate pro-life voice is pretty much unaccounted for, but never before have people had an opportunity to see in glowingly contrasted black & white footage this issue presented so objectively.

Some of the film wavers a bit too long while discussing the most obscure of fundamentalist anti-abortion extremist groups, collectively called by one speaker as a trend of “Christian Reconstructionism,” where a quiet revolution is under way with the goal of turning the USA into an Iran-like theocracy. While intriguing, these elements take away from the heart of the debate, and though perhaps Kaye did this intentionally, this is certainly one of the problems tied to the near impossibility of the two sides having a civil, intellectual deliberation.

There will be many other attempts to do what the filmmaker has mostly done here, and they may be more successful at offering audiences a more complete review of everyone’s positions, but until then, the artistry and expansiveness of Kaye’s immensely important work is the superior to date.