Lake of Fire.

"[Tony] Kaye has said he wants Lake of Fire to be the film on the issue of abortion - the one that both camps will watch and say, 'Okay, that's fair,' even if they still leave wanting to strangle the people on the other side," writes David Edelstein in New York. "Most of the interviews were done in the 90s, before the director, a voluble Englishman, made the skinhead drama American History X (and dynamited his Hollywood career by loudly denouncing the studio and the star, Edward Norton, for recutting the film). But the dialogue hasn't progressed much; the principal difference is that today, the Supreme Court is a lot closer to overturning Roe v Wade. That makes this sprawling, scary, nearly unbearable film more important than ever."

Updated through 10/7.

"For me, the largest revelation involved understanding more fully than I ever had before how abortion sits at the nexus of so many different issues: from the right to access to birth control, to the belief in the death penalty, to race, to religion, to gender," writes Matt Singer. "Abortion draws 'true believers' from all sides who want to trade in absolutes while discussing enormous moral, ethical and spiritual issues that are based in the fundamental unknowns of life on earth."

Also at IFC News, Aaron Hillis talks with Kaye, who tells him he'd like to do a version for television and a series of DVDs.

"As Shoah is to the Jewish Holocaust... as Ken Burns's doc series was to the Civil War... as The War Room is to the modern political campaign... Lake of Fire is to the issue of abortion rights," declares David Poland.

Update, 10/2: "Not without flaws and omissions, Kaye's project is nonetheless entirely courageous, the work of a man sincerely anguished by America's bitter conflict between generally religious pro-life proponents and secular pro-choice supporters, and sincerely committed to finding common ground on which to start a more constructive conversation about abortion," writes Michael Joshua Rowin at indieWIRE. "Several of Kaye's subjects genuinely believe that the legal status of abortion has led to a loss of respect for life, but by revealing the human face of those who go through with an abortion he's proved that nothing could be further from the truth."

Updates, 10/4: "The film doesn't employ narration or on-screen texts that reveal his views on abortion; instead, there are 152 minutes of talking-head testimonials, on-the-street interviews and archival and new visuals," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "This means that you have to pay extra-special attention to [Kaye's] filmmaking choices, to the way he juxtaposes sights and sounds and who gets to speak and when.... Intentionally or not, Mr Kaye has made a documentary that vividly delineates how religious-fundamentalist terrorists take root in a country, slide around the law and gain legitimacy (martyrdom), and how those who profess to love God can justify murder." From that same page, you can download six minutes of Kaye talking about his use of black-and-white and more.

"This surprisingly fluid and continuously engaging two-and-a-half-hour movie, which Kaye shot himself in luminous black-and-white and almost entirely in 35mm, is at once monumental and ghostly, further dematerialized by Anne Dudley's ethereal score," writes J Hoberman in the Voice. "For a movie that shows the unshowable and might well induce a migraine given the pounding conviction with which God's will is invoked, Kaye's jeremiad is remarkably non-judgmental."

"Lake of Fire never drags, though it feels slightly less focused in its final 20 minutes," writes Michelle Orange at the Reeler. "Decidedly non-partisan in approach, even when Kaye missteps he seems to do it in equal measure - first focusing in on the unstoppably flapping lips of an evangelical minister as he raves about the children and Jesus and that inevitable lake of fire, then making a bizarre stop to watch an anomalous rock band fronted by an angry, topless, leather-thonged woman who angrily simulates penetration with a coat hanger."

Because so much of the film was shot in the 90s, it "now feels like a peculiarly resonant slice of Clinton-era history, a bitter prequel to the political chaos of the late Bush years," notes Andrew O'Hehir, who talks with Kaye for Salon.

Cinematical's Ryan Stewart argues that the doc "ultimately comes across as pro-choice even if it's not intended to."

"For all his excesses - a reliance on overwrought music cues, an artistic indulgence in the cinematography he himself crafts - Kaye may very well be the perfect filmmaker for such a project," suggests Michael Joshua Rowin in the L Magazine.

Online listening tip. Kaye's a guest on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Watching the most graphic scenes, "it's hard not to consider the way that abortions have recently been appropriated by horror films," writes Eric Kohn in the New York Press. "Chinese director Fruit Chan's Dumplings segment of Three Extremes presents fetuses as a mystical delicacy, and the festival hit Inside follows a French woman's efforts to prevent an intruder from pilfering her child right out of her uterus. To some extent, Kaye's film has equal shock value, and there are probably a few too many gross-out moments. But he gives such detailed context that you can't hold it against him for putting it all out there. Nothing is private; the whole thing is honest."

"Lake of Fire looks and moves like a cross between a DA Pennebaker documentary and a Nike ad, and it really shouldn't work at all," writes Matt Zoller Seitz at the House Next Door. "Anne Dudley's religioso score; Kaye's graphically striking, at times borderline impressionistic compositions and cuts; the frank footage of abortions, aborted and eviscerated fetuses, self-inflicted abortion casualties, and crime photos of abortion providers gunned down by pro-life fanatics: all these elements should combine to produce a muddled, exploitive and punishing experience. But they don't. Why?" Naturally, he offers a few ideas.

Update, 10/5: "There's a madness to Lake of Fire, a two-and-a-half hour documentary about abortion in America, that goes hand-in-glove with its staggering achievement," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club, where he also interviews Kaye.

Update, 10/7: John Horn talks with Kaye for the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by dwhudson at October 1, 2007 3:24 PM