Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again

As the nation and the world marked the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the program of this year's Toronto Film Festival offered no shortage of movies grappling uncomfortably with the current state of global affairs. In The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair, for example, filmmakers Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein add a troubling footnote to their 2004 Iraq documentary Gunner Palace by following up on the story of Yunis Khatayer Abbas, a journalist arrested in front of their cameras during the Gunner production and subsequently subjected to nine months of "interrogation" by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib on specious charges that he was plotting to kill British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Elsewhere, British director Gabriel Range's D.O.A.P. (a.k.a. Death of a President) offered its own "documentary" portrait of a presidential assassination — specifically, the day that George W. Bush was assassinated by an unknown assailant outside of a Chicago hotel. And though it takes place some 30 years ago, in the thick of South Africa's anti-Apartheid movement, Philip Noyce's searing Catch a Fire couldn't help seeming like an allegory with its fact-based story of one ordinary man's unlikely conversion into a terrorist.

Of those films, D.O.A.P. has created the biggest festival stir: Even before it screened for the first time on Sunday night, one major daily newspaper was even rumored to be flying in its noted film critic from Los Angeles for the sole purpose of seeing the film, while another colleague told me he was sure he'd be fired by his editor if he didn't get a ticket for D.O.A.P.'s sold-out Sunday screening. All of which makes for a good news story, but does it make for a good movie? So far, reviews of the film are all over the map, from those that say it lives up to the hype to those that say it's all hype and nothing else. As for me, I elected to skip the crowds and catch up with D.O.A.P. at a later festival screening, once its initial 15 minutes in the pop-culture ether have subsided and the film can be better judged on its own merits (or lack thereof). In the meantime, one of the best films I have seen in Toronto is no less politically charged, even if the war it addresses isn't the one in Iraq, but rather the one unfolding within our own borders.

The movie is Lake of Fire, and it represents the culmination of some 15 years spent by the British commercials and music video director Tony Kaye canvassing the U.S. abortion debate. Traveling the country from Sioux Falls to Washington, D.C., Kaye surveys a broad range of alternately articulate and fanatical voices representing both sides of this deeply divisive issue, all of them presented by Kaye in the same non-judgmental light. There are hard-line extremists here, from Planned Parenthood advocates to the virulently anti-abortion Christian activist Randall Terry, but also a range of conflicted voices from the grey areas in-between, like veteran Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff (long one of the liberal lift's few outspoken pro-life pundits), attorney Alan Dershowitz (who discusses how his own views on abortion evolved after be became a parent) and — perhaps most intriguingly — one Norma McCorvey, a.k.a. "Jane Roe" from the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case, who since her conversion to Christianity has become an outspoken pro-life supporter herself. And then there are the many real abortion patients Kaye interviews, for whom abortion is less a political issue than a deeply personal one.

If Kaye's name rings a bell, it's because, back in 1998, his feature directorial debut, American History X, made Hollywood headlines as much for its gritty story about a reformed neo-Nazi skinhead (Edward Norton) as for the epic editing-room battles that reportedly ensued between Kaye, Norton and the film's studio, New Line Cinema. You may recall that a disgruntled Kaye went so far as to air his grievances in full-page ads in the pages of Variety and ultimately sued New Line in a failed attempt to have his name removed from the film's credits. (He wanted to be credited as Humpty Dumpty instead.) A few years later, Kaye's name surfaced in connection with another bizarre episode, when his planned project to film a documentary about a series of acting classes taught by Marlon Brando supposedly fell apart over Kaye's decision to show up for one filming session dressed as Osama Bin Laden. (As for Kaye's portly star, his costumes of choice were said to range from female drag to a priest's outfit.) All of which is to say that it's no wonder that critics and other industry people here in Toronto haven't exactly been clamoring to get a ticket for Kaye's latest opus. I mean: A two-and-a-half-hour, black-and-white abortion documentary directed by Humpty Dumpty? Get real! Even I only stumbled into Lake of Fire after first showing up to see a different film and getting shut out due to a capacity crowd.

There's no denying that Lake of Fire is long, a tad bombastic at times (like the burning candles and dirge-like music of the opening title sequence), deeply disquieting at others (there are abortion-related images here that most people hope to live their entire lives without seeing) and anything but salable to a large commercial audience. (We are a long way here from the audience-pleasing agitprop of a Michael Moore.) Yet it is also a resolutely intelligent, searching and unwaveringly balanced cross-section of the not-so-new America, where those who support total social freedom walk the same streets as those who feel that anyone who takes the Lord's name in vein should be summarily executed, and where tolerance for opposing belief systems exists in ever shorter supply. Make no mistake, Kaye suggests, we are living in times of civil war, and if you don't believe him, just look into the eyes of Emily Lyons, a nurse blinded and disfigured in the 1998 bombing of a Birmingham abortion clinic, and — whether you pity her or feel that she got what she deserved — try to feel otherwise.