Lake of Fire is coming to the Brattle Theater in Cambridge for an exclusive engagement October 26th - November 2nd.

I have blogged about this 2 1/2 hour Hollywood documentary on the politics of abortion a number of times since it first appeared at the Toronto Film festival last year. More recently, I have summarized the strong and interesting reviews the film is gaining, mainly in mainstream newspapers.

What I have found most interesting is the film's treatment of antiabortion militance and violence in the U.S. -- which has been such an intergral element rather than an exception to, the antiabortion movement and the wider religious right. Awhile back I wrote:

The film spends a lot of time on an underdiscussed subject: violence against abortion providers. Interviewees include Emily Lyons, an Alabama nurse who was severely injured by a pipe bomb exploded at a clinic by Eric Rudolph, who was on the FBIs Most Wanted List for years in connection with the bombing of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, as well as two clinics and a gay bar. Also interviewed is Paul Hill, who publicly advocated the notion that the murder of abortion providers is "justifiable homicide."  Hill went on to murder a doctor and an escort himself, and was executed in Florida for his crimes. The loose-but-nevertheless-criminal-and-theocratic revolutionary-underground-network is rarely discussed anywhere, let alone in such a remarkable and prominent vehicle as this.

Operation Rescue had a slogan -- "If abortion is murder, then act like it's murder." That many people don't "act like is murder" underscores the moral complexity of the matter. That there are those who do, and who are tacitly supported by many others, underscores the revolutionary quality of such thinking.

But many mainstream newspaper accounts reduce discussion of the film to matter of the morality of abortion over the wider political and indeed, criminal and terrorist dimensions of the story. The latest such discussion is in The Guardian newspaper of London.

Tony Kaye, who made his name as a award-winning director of commercial and music videos, has spent 16 years and devoted $7m (£3.4m) of his own money to produce what he hopes will be the definitive documentary on the American abortion debate. The film, which has opened in New York and is set for release across 23 US cities, has divided critics, with some hailing it as the documentary of the year, others denouncing it as sensationalist. Detractors have also pointed out that most of the talking heads who appear on camera are male, including Noam Chomsky and the lawyer Alan Dershowitz.

(And me.) The Guardian continues:

Kaye began shooting Lake of Fire in 1992 as a way, he says, of exploring his own deep moral uncertainties about abortion. His personal opinions, he told the Guardian, are as polarised as those of the American public. "If I had to tick a box I would say I was pro-choice. I would vote for a woman's right to chose without hesitation, because without legal abortions poor women die." But emotionally, he says, he is "completely opposed to abortion. I see it as murder - the taking of another's life."

The result of his own internal conflict is a documentary that is, in the conclusion of Cineaste magazine, "a maddeningly elusive film". Shot in arty black and white, it has sequences that will dismay pro-choice feminists and pro-life fundamentalists in equal measure.

The most shocking section of the 152-minute film is footage shot by Kaye himself of the abortion of a 20-week foetus. It shows the foetus's head and eye staring straight at the camera, its hand in a metal collecting tray and its foot placed on a ruler and measuring just over 3cm.

The foetal parts are checked by a doctor to ensure the operation has been completed while he explains why he has conducted the operation: "The really important thing is that we have been able to help this young lady to get on with her life by facilitating her decision not to be a mother at this time."

Kaye told the Guardian that he wholly agreed with those sentiments. "But the irony of that moment is that you are seeing a snuff movie - they have chopped up a human being, a baby."

The footage, which Kaye describes as "probably the most controversial shot ever shown in cinemas", has raised accusations that the documentary is slanted against abortion. But other graphic images, including a picture of a woman slumped in the corner of a hotel room where she had died trying to abort her own foetus with a coat hanger, will prove no less shocking to pro-life supporters.

Indeed.

But because the film defies existing, contradictory narratives about abortion -- it may very well be ignored by the political community. So far, there have been few commentaries on the film from the opposing camps. Most of the writing about the film has come from professional film reviewers.
Still, the film may yet filter into the broader public discussion of the politics of abortion and affect it in surprising and unexpected ways. But I believe it will take a lot more people to actually see and start discussing the film for that to happen.