Steady Diet of Film

Review: A Mother's Courage: Talking Back To Autism

A Mother's Courage: Talking Back To Autism

It's difficult to avoid comparisons between A Mother's Courage (originally titled The Sunshine Boy) with The Horse Boy (originally titled Over the Hills and Far Away) another recent autobiographical documentary on the stress put on families dealing with Autism. With Horse Boy, Rupert Isaacson documented his family's trip from their cozy Texas suburb to the far-flung provinces of Mongolia to seek shamanic treatments from reindeer herders. Fridrik Thor Fridriksson's Courage centers on Margret Dagmar Ericsdottirs, an Icelandic women from a similarly privileged family who travels to the States to visit different schools and individual specialists in the field of Autism. Their 8 year old son Kaley has gone through many experimental treatments with little results and has now aged past the point of most effective interventions.

Autism is a little understood neurological disorder that heightens some senses to the point of being unable to cope with outside stimuli. Kids on the more progressed end of the spectrum can appear to be blind, deaf or unable to speak even though there is no physical abnormality. The affected often develop repetitive behaviors to self-stimulate in a controlled, soothing way. Even those on the less-impacted end of the spectrum have extreme difficulty empathizing or interacting with their parents and peers.

While sympathetic to these families' struggle, Fridriksson seems particularly focused on the excesses of American families' lifestyles (an inevitable parallel in a culture with enough wealthy and self-determination to be at the forefront of Autism treatments). When spending time with various Americans the camera carefully monitors indulgent snack food, the paper plates they use, the locks on the fridge and pantry with special reverie given to the Costco shopping experience.

 

Read the rest of my review at Greencine.

Review: Rachel

Rachel Corrie was an American activist who, while protesting the demolition of Palestinian housing developments in the Gaza Strip, was crushed to death by an Israeli Defense Forces bulldozer in early 2003. Three years later, her journal entries and letters home were adapted by actor Alan Rickman into “My Name is Rachel Corrie” a stage play that continues to be performed today. Now those same writings provide the narration for documentary filmmaker Simone Bittone’s film Rachel. Similar to Bittone’s previous film The Wall (winner of the special jury prize at Sundance 2006), Rachel is a cool, even-tempered film about the most heated and emotional conflict of our time.

The film sifts through dozens of the people touched by Corrie’s death and how her earlier experiences propelled her to such dangerous political activism. Most of the people interviewed are very mindful of the role they will play in creating or preventing the process of turning Rachel Corrie into a martyr and carefully package their responses accordingly. A mournful Palestinian villager credits Corrie with saving several people’s lives. A resolute Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson provides mounds of investigatory paperwork requested by the army to better understand what happened. A representative from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM, the group Corrie was affiliated with at the time of her death) demonstrates, in public relations hyperdrive, the ‘entire day’ of training that Corrie received before heading to Gaza. College faculty members are stricken with their own sense of culpability. Corrie’s affinity group is still slightly dazed by their gruesome memories. An anonymous Israeli foot soldier (not present the day Corrie died but was stationed in the area) talks about the regularity of war lust and casual destruction. Private investigators are furious that the crime scene was tampered with and that an autopsy was performed without the presence of a neutral witness. The Israeli medical examiner insists that his office called the US Embassy, who in turn refused to send a representative.

It’s a purposely mundane and hopelessly rhetorical back and forth that will serve mostly to reinforce people’s existing feelings about the players. Intercut with photographs of Corrie, a pretty, blond, American girl who is always framed to look inquisitive or joyful, we are reminded how much the stakes change when an American dies in a foreign war zone. Her letters illustrate an uneasy equilibrium between commitment to the Palestinians’ cause and naivety as to what the conflict really is. There’s a mysterious absence of the dangerlust one might expect considering that, by all accounts, Corrie purposely sought out the most dangerous place in the world to be a direct action resistor.

Bitton’s laissez-faire approach breaks a bit for the film’s harrowing finale. The surviving members of ISM bemoan the fact they only had still cameras to document what happened. Had the events been captured by video, they express with rage and regret, the debate would be settled about what transpired--and Corrie may have not died at all. The film closes with surveillance footage shot from another bulldozer, which was positioned to witness Corrie’s death. The operator of this bulldozer, who contacted his emergency dispatch as the events unraveled, narrates. Bitton shows the affinity group the footage and encourages them to narrate it for themselves.

And the ISM members are right; the video footage is a great deal more conclusive than their collection of still images. Yet enough loose ends remain to provide fodder for both sides of the debate. This break in such a constructed style highlights Bittone’s clearest directive in the film; entrenched beliefs (fortified by heated emotions and long-standing grudges) will not be swayed by details of individual tragedies.

Rachel plays at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City starting October 8th-14th.

**Full disclosure: While I never met her personally, I graduated from the Evergreen State College the same year that Rachel Corrie would have, had she completed school.