tony kaye's LAKE OF FIRE (2007)

towards the beginning of Tony Kaye’s devastating, clairvoyant documentary Lake Of Fire, celebrity attorney Alan Dershowitz relates a parable about a rabbi mediating between a bickering couple. the husband, he declares, is right, and so is the wife. a student, however, objects. “they can’t both be right!” the student, the rabbi admits, is also right.

this paradox, as painfully simple as it is complex, is central to Lake Of Fire, and Kaye is uncommonly mindful of this, particularly within the myopic world of nonfiction film. but his subject requires, and deserves, nothing less: after sixteen years of production, Kaye has produced what amounts to a definitive primer on abortion in America, unconcerned with convincing but hell-bent on trying to understand. “everybody is right when it comes to the issue of abortion,” Dershowitz concludes, and Lake Of Fire unceasingly concurs.

beautifully constructed even at two and a half hours, the film bounces back and forth across the culture war’s most brutal line of fire, collecting from each side the scattered moral and ethical imperatives that define them. on the pro-life side we speak to pastors and protesters, unshakable in their defense of the unborn; on the pro-choice side we hear from the activists and doctors in the trenches as well as from great minds like Peter Singer and Noam Chomsky, who dare to take an objective look at a divisive, impossible issue.

more important than names and faces, of course, is the depth and breadth of ideas at play. where a woman’s right to choose is concerned, Lake Of Fire rarely has occasion to repeat itself, moving rapid-fire through all-too-relevant subjects like civil liberties, sexual politics, public health, and the hypocrisies of focusing resources on the unborn while men, women, and children starve and suffer all over the world. through this array of well-argued positions, it’s Chomsky, speaking with his usual tone of profound common sense, that makes one of the film’s most salient points: no one is supporting infanticide, and no one is bemoaning the loss of potentially life-giving cells when a woman washes her hands. “somewhere between that,” however, “there are decisions to be made about how we are going to balance what we call ‘life’ against other problems. and those decisions are not simple.”

visits to the pro-life side emphasize the difficulty. it’s harder, of course, to effectively communicate faith-based stances to an objective audience than it is the civic and logical bases of the pro-choicers, but Lake Of Fire manages it wherever it can by facilitating a genuine empathy; as we become attuned to and confident in their convictions, it’s harder to dismiss their fervor in condemning and combating what they see as an ongoing, culture-approved prenatal holocaust. (particularly affecting is a DC protestor’s quiet, poignant eulogy for his unborn nephew, which makes the heart of the anti-abortion movement much clearer than any bumper sticker or picket sign ever could.)

one of the many things Kaye doesn’t shy away from, however, is a sobering examination of how this disenfranchisement stokes the fires of fanaticism, and Lake Of Fire’s primary detour from stances, facts and fictions emerges as its strongest narrative thread. the key figure in this portion of the film is Paul Hill, a defrocked Presbyterian minister and vocal advocate for the murder of abortion providers, whose repeated intersections with Kaye’s chronicle of anti-abortion violence spells only trouble. but we also hear from a survivor of a clinic bombing, a callow murderer trying to use Catholicism as a shield, and a nurse who has worked for no less than three murdered doctors…one of whom is also interviewed. (there’s also the matter of off-kilter movement firebrand Randall Terry, whose trajectory as an invective-spewing radio host and paleoconservative reformer is somehow nearly as insidious as Hill and his cronies.) in a way this intermittent emphasis on the violent, unstable faction of the pro-life movement could be construed as skewing the film, but Kaye’s only sin is curiosity; the sad contradictions in this violence and the figures that perpetuate it are an undeniably crucial element in the equation.

besides, any damage to be done to their own cause by the Hills and Terrys of the world is undone by Kaye’s unblinking ferociousness when it comes to the down and dirty business behind it all: the procedure. Lake Of Fire spares no gory detail: one moment we are treated to a photo of the heartbreaking aftermath of a botched pre-Roe self-abortion, the next to a poorly-filmed, stomach-turning movement filmstrip, produced to galvanize believers like so much moral pornography. but the most jarring, haunting sequence is smartly deployed early in the film, as Kaye’s elegant 35mm black and white captures the aftermath of a second trimester abortion in all its quiet horror; the images he comes away with are surely among the cinema’s most unforgettable.

and that’s fitting for Lake Of Fire, as it earns its bona fides as a landmark piece of nonfiction film; it’s accessible to the best of its ability, and communicates important ideas with a clear head. but the greatest praise one can give it is that it is challenging: emotionally, intellectually, and morally. there’s nary a moment that won’t move you to reflection, disgust, or both, and when it fades to black you’ll be as prepared as one can be to make up your own mind.

(from the KNOXVILLE VOICE)