Posted on 10/11/2007 9:00:00 AM PDT by XR7
Few issues generate as much heat in the United States as the debate over abortion -- the subject of a powerful and graphic new documentary by controversial British filmmaker Tony Kaye.
"Lake of Fire," currently on limited release in the United States, unwinds over more than two and a half hours of interviews with some of the leading figures from the pro-life and pro-choice camps.
But it is the graphic and disturbing depiction of termination procedures, filmed like the rest of the movie in black and white, that marks the film out.
"From the moment I started making the film I thought I have to show an abortion, which at the time had never been done before," Kaye, best known for his 1998 neo-Nazi feature "American History X," told AFP in an interview.
"There was no question about whether or not that was the right thing to do because if I'm documenting two sides of the argument, that is one side of the argument and you have to show it," he said.
Kaye, who cut his teeth directing commercials and music videos, separately admits to being "addicted to controversy when I began."
One scene depicts a doctor sifting through a surgical tray after performing a late-term abortion, where the grisly residue of an arm, a foot and part of a face can be clearly made out.
"It's about as shocking as any motion picture can ever get. It's illegal to film someone being killed," said Kaye.
They may be the kind of images used by anti-abortion activists, but Kaye also doesn't shy from showing pictures of a kneeling and bent-over naked woman who died after performing a botched abortion on herself with a wire coat hanger.
Kaye worked for more than 15 years on "Lake of Fire" -- anti-abortion activist John Burt's description of the hell awaiting abortionists -- and said his goal when he set out was simply to show both sides of the argument.
"The concept was to make a film about the debate over the issue of abortion but to make it a non-propagandist way and to create a kind of war of words."
He said he wanted "to create this kind of a weave where we really explore the issue without taking any sides."
"It's very easy for me to do that because... I don't really have a point of view. I'm not a politician or a commentator," he said.
The film features leading thinkers including linguist and leftist intellectual Noam Chomsky, who dismisses the notion of certainty in the debate.
"You're not going to get the answers from holy texts. You're not going to the answers from biologists," he says. "These are matters of human concern."
"There are conflicting values and taken in isolation each of these values is quite legitimate," he adds. "Choice is legitimate, preserving life is legitimate."
If the film arrives at any conclusion it is neatly summed up by Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz when he says: "Everybody is right when it comes to the issue of abortion."
"In the end human beings have to decide. In the end each of us has to decide using whatever resources we have available to us: religion, our mind, our sense of what is right and wrong in society," he adds.
A key figure in the film is Norma McCorvey, better known as Jane Roe, the lead plaintiff in the landmark Roe vs Wade case that legalized abortion in the United States in 1973 and continues to shape the political landscape.
McCorvey was the poster child of the pro-choice camp until she turned pro-life and explains in the film how anti-abortion campaigners told her that "I was the one that was responsible for all the dead babies."
Even after spending years working on the project, Kaye, however, admits to not knowing where he stands in the debate.
"My position on the subject is that I don't really know what's right. I didn't know much in the beginning... and at the end I was just as confused."
How convenient.
There is no right and wrong.
Everyone is right in his own eyes.
It's all legal, of course.
We are so civilized. So openminded, aren't we?
"My position on the subject is that I don't really know what's right. I didn't know much in the beginning... and at the end I was just as confused."
After seeing and filming defenseless human beings heartlessly dismembered, he's "confused."
That's all?
If Almighty God played god like we play god, we would never have crawled out of the dust we came from.
“It’s all legal, of course.”
Legal, but immoral. And you can’t legislate morality.
I would take his comments with a grain of salt. He wants people from both sides to come see it, and if he comes out as being on one side, the other side will call it propaganda and not see it. If the movie does a good job of presenting both sides, it will be a good thing.
“It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.” - Rod Serling 1961
Of course only politicians and commentators have points of view. Those who create documents are innocent of having a point of view.
Norma McCorvey has a lot of blood on her hands.
..but I know this....Norma was used and discarded.
Sarah Weddington, attorney for Planned Parenthood/NARAL were looking for a 'test case' when Norma McCorvey became available .... and they did the rest.
I also know it was pro-lifers (specifically 2 daughters of pro-lifers) who reached out to 'Miss Norma' in love and acceptance and led her to repentance and God's forgiveness.
America will be judged more harshly than Nazi Germany. Hitler paid his people the compliment of believing that his murders had to be concealed. They saw the inside of the death camps only AFTER the war. No one has concealed the abortion horror from the American people. The American people have seen the bloody, dismembered corpses for three decades and counting, and the majority are unmoved. And while Hitler’s murders were carried out by an inner circle of soldiers and police, America’s holocaust has been carried out by about 30% of ALL WOMEN, with the encouragement of about 30% of ALL MEN.
But she has repented. And done beautiful work ever since.
HA!!
Limited, indeed.
Information: what they want to give.
Disinformation: what we get.
...what a way to be *free*.
I’m not sure I’m familiar with that...is it a recent release?
MURDER IS WRONG.
“America’s holocaust has been carried out by about 30% of ALL WOMEN, with the encouragement of about 30% of ALL MEN.”
I’d say the percentages are, unfortunately, much higher...
Odd how mass murder is acceptable depending upon victims and killers.
As I often say on Freepers, we are quick to condemn the actions of others as wrong/immoral/savage but all the while we allow the slaughter of generations.
Your tagline reminds me of Betty White’s character in The Lake...
This was supposedly a "cure" for all the "back alley" abortions that killed thousands of lives. However, there were statistics about deaths from illegal abortions.
In 1973, the year of Roe, there were 39 deaths from illegal abortions.
The numbers decreased dramatically after the discovery of penicillin.
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If the reality of the "procedure" is so horrifying that it can barely be shown, then how can it possibly be thought of as acceptable?
What in God's name could be the social imperative that would legitimize such a thing?
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