Terry Lawson, the movie critic of the Detroit Free Press, files a gripping review of Tony Kaye's abortion documentary, "Lake of Fire," in today's edition. The direction of the article certainly seems to suggest it was written to a reading audience that is "pro-choice" or generally indifferent to the debate. Thus his opening lines are of particular significance."Lake of Fire" might not be the most coherent or polished documentary of the year, but it is by far the most provocative and disturbing.
It takes an old subject -- abortion in America -- and opens it up to new debate in unexpected ways. Some of it will make you flinch. Some of it will make you angry. Some of it will make you indignant. Some of it will make you rethink what you've thought before.
Which is the point...
Over the years, the pro-life movement has had to contend with several persons, incidents and attitudes that have hurt our cause, as it were, "from within" Any honest evaluation must include those ugly and counter-productive elements. Nevertheless, pro-life advocates have always maintained that a fair treatment of abortion, an unbiased and comprehensive examination of the issue as per the best ideals of journalism, will end up as a persuasive argument for the sanctity of life. Lawson's description seems to suggest that "Lake of Fire" does just that.
It isn't the first movie to give equal voice to those who represent the euphemisms of "pro-choice" and "pro-life" but it may be the first to give voice to just about everybody who has an opinion, including the late Paul Hill, seen not long before he killed an abortion doctor; inexhaustible evangelical Randall Terry; and from the other side of the argument, bio-ethicist Peter Singer.
Singer's take on abortion is that an embryo has no conception of birth or death, so a word like "murder" would not apply.
But Kaye does not allow us the luxury of thinking about abortion as the subject of some town hall meeting in hell. "Lake of Fire" employs imagery often far more graphic than the movies and pamphlets distributed by abortion opponents. Graphic footage of a procedure at 20 weeks comes early enough in the movie to make us wonder whether we'll be able to endure it, but this turns out not to be the most painful thing we see.
In the film's most stunning sequence, Kaye turns his camera on a 28-year-old woman and follows her through the entire procedure, from giving her history to the clinic counselor -- a survivor of childhood abuse, this will be her fifth abortion -- through the surgery prep to the operating table and then, to the recovery room. There, she attempts to make sense of what has just happened to her body and that of a child to whom she might have given life.
If you shed tears here, it will not just be for the unborn, but for those who must go on living.
