Documentary throws fresh light on abortion

Documentary throws fresh light on abortion
Tuesday September 19 3:20 AM ET

While 2 1/2 hours may sound like a long time for a documentary 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 nonfiction 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, though 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 Americans accept (without, for instance, insisting on America's getting "back to the Bible").

Director-producer: Tony Kaye; Executive producers: Yan Lin Kaye, Steve Golin, David Kanter; Director of photography: Tony Kaye; Music: Anne Dudley; Editor: Peter Goddard.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter