Safe

SAFE              B+                  

USA  Great Britain  (119 mi)  1995  d:  Todd Haynes         

A subversive horror film on everyday life with a nightmarish impact that creeps up on you, suggesting invisible toxins are all around us, where there’s little we can do to combat their sinister presence.  Voted the best film of the 90’s in a poll by the Village Voice, still reeling from the residue of the AIDS epidemic in the 80’s, Haynes has made the ultimate satire on the health kick du jour, like the latest diet or self-help cure, viewed as just another fad in the Southern California atmosphere where fads are everything, creating an off-putting, anti-propaganda film that is in itself propaganda, becoming a mystifyingly weird comment on modern life in the San Fernando Valley in 1987.  One of the few films given a contemporary setting, as most other Haynes films are period pieces, this most certainly can be considered a comment on our times, but the jury is still out on what exactly it intends to say.  What it does do is create a baffling take on modern existence, as we are strangely cut off from each other, strangers in a strange land, so distanced from ourselves that we’re no longer able to even communicate how we feel.  Much like Monica Vitti in Antonioni’s RED DESERT (1964), Carol White (Julianne Moore) is filled with doubt and existential dread about the surrounding world, disarmed and even disabled by its corrosive effects, where inexplicably the body reacts in horror to the unseen presence of toxins in the air, perhaps chemical pollutants, or other environmental effects, where the enemy is an invisible force from which there is no easy remedy.  What this film does is elevate the debilitating physical effects, using a surreal electronic soundtrack from Ed Tomney including hovering helicopters and garbled conversations that couldn’t feel more eerie and disorienting, as if the world is closing in, offering the experience of horror throughout.  Expanding on themes introduced in the middle section of his prior film Poison (1991), an allegory for the AIDS generation, this is given a broader context, turning this into a woman’s film, filtered through the living and breathing embodiment of Carol White, who more often than not comes across like the airhead Sissy Spacek in Altman’s 3 Women (1977), yet seemingly lives the idyllic life, mundane but affluent.  Her immaculate house could make the cover of Architecture Digest, with a museum-like modern interior where nothing is out of place, creating a décors of perfection, yet it’s a completely sterile existence, like the white room at the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  The opening shot through the window of their Mercedes Benz reveals the upscale neighborhood, manicured lawns with electronic gates, a picture of the American Dream, as it caters exclusively to the white wealthy class, with no one out of place, keeping all the unwanted elements out, as the only non-white figures are landscapers, maids, or house painters, non-threatening people hired to make the lives of the owners that much easier.  This is a Stepford Wives habitat, passive and submissive women whose every whim is catered to by a minority class, while she pampers herself in the latest styles in order to make herself beautiful and demure for the master of the house. 

One of the more ferocious takes on the noxious air quality engulfing smog-ridden Los Angeles, the feeling that something is amiss is communicated almost immediately, as the first utterance from Carol as she steps out of the car is a brief sniffle.  While there are no emotional signs of intimacy in her relatively aloof marriage to Greg (Xander Berkeley) and her stepson, she remains a stay-at-home wife, with indispensable help from her Hispanic maid, Fulvia (Martha Velez), where she has a habit of drinking a full glass of milk every day.  Her day consists of ordinary routines, like gardening, taking clothes to the dry cleaners, or working out with other women in an aerobics class, with no full-fledged friendships, only casual acquaintances where she’s considered one of the girls.  The first noticeable disturbance happens while driving behind a truck spewing exhaust fumes, causing her to cough uncontrollably, exaggerated into a hysterical fit that continues even after she exits into a parking garage, finally coming to a stop in a supposedly safe place.  While she complains of headaches and constant fatigue, developing a nose bleed while getting a perm at a hair salon, then can’t breathe, having an uncontrollable asthma attack at a baby shower (one of the better staged scenes for all the decorative pastoral colors and overflowing hair styles, like a party of Barbie dolls), her dilemma is that no one will listen to her or believe her, especially her male doctor, thinking it’s all in her head, referring her for a psychological exam, which consists of a man behind a huge desk staring at her, waiting for her to say something significant.  Carol isn’t really capable of explaining herself and instead spends her time apologizing all the time, where she’s well-mannered and polite to a fault.  One of the funnier moments occurs after the husband gets ready for work, including deodorant and cologne, adding hairspray as a finishing touch, but when he reaches out to his wife, she vomits on the floor, as if she’s allergic to him.  This is a mixed message that offers plenty of underlying implications, yet Haynes allows nothing definitive.  Picking up a flyer, she starts attending a seminar for people afflicted with 20th century environmental illnesses, as if allergic to modern life, where she begins to repeat the catch phrases, as she comes to believe that a sofa she recently purchased is “totally toxic,” expressing this view with surprising surety.  In fact, her mysterious ailment becomes her personal identity, what she believes in the most, becoming addicted to it, as it not just overwhelms her, but she becomes obsessed by her otherwise inexplicable descent into weakness and frailty, for which there is no remedy, leaving her ostracized from society, away from all the damaging influences, like everyday household chemicals, forced to live in a supposedly safe yet imprisoning environment.  By blocking out all outside reality, one supposedly insulates oneself from worldly harm, but feels more like a retreat from life itself.  

Watching an advertisement on television describing a refuge for people who are particularly sensitive to environmental pollutants, Carol packs her bags, hauling along her oxygen tank, making her way for the cleaner desert air of the Wrenwood Center in New Mexico, a new age haven treating those experiencing the harmful and invasive effects of what’s described as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS).  Her arrival is hilarious, as a woman wearing a surgical mask starts screaming at the taxi driver to turn around, as the car fumes are toxic, where it’s as if she was invaded by zombies.  The fear and panic is something of a surprise, yet it feels contagious, as if all are afflicted by it, where many on the premises still wear surgical masks and carry oxygen tanks, so Wrenwood is apparently a work in progress.  Similarly, the majority of those afflicted seem to be women, who dominate the patient count, though the founder of the center is Peter Dunning (Peter Friedman), who is himself afflicted, described sympathetically as “He’s a chemically sensitive person with AIDS, so his perspective is incredibly vast.”  After a stream of messages about the power of love and folk songs of inner peace, where a fabulous Kate Wolf song (an iconic West coast songwriter/musician who died tragically young from leukemia) becomes a self-healing mantra, Give Yourself to Love (Live) - Kate Wolf - YouTube (3:54), we quickly realize this place is little more than a brainwashed cult, where the self-help guru is a sham, living in a giant estate on a hill overlooking the puny cabins of the residents, but the patients are so desperate to believe in something, that they’re willing to buy in.  Filled with empty platitudes and tearful group sessions, along with an cognitively unbalanced man running around in an alien space suit, “The only person that can make you sick is you,” the guru holds each and every patient responsible, which really amounts to blame, as if everyone is in charge of building up their own positive energy field that allows their debilitating immune systems to better combat invasive illnesses.  While this is preposterous, this is actually one of the inspirations behind the film, as it comes from one of the best sellers of the time, Louise Hay’s The AIDS Book:  Creating a Positive Approach, published in 1988, which professes the power of positive thinking, and according to Haynes (Todd Haynes by Alison MacLean - BOMB Magazine) “literally states that if we loved ourselves more we wouldn’t get sick with this illness...That’s scary.”  Rather than getting better, Carol descends into immune failure, noticeably thinner, with lesions on her face, attached to her everpresent oxygen tank, eventually moving into a biologically secure, sealed-off existence in what amounts to her safe space, like living in a bubble, going to the extremes while pledging to love herself more.  This is one of the strangest portraits of life in sunny Southern California, turning it into a rabidly polluted toxic zone, what amounts to a death trap, with wealthy blissed-out residents at their wits end searching to find the magical elixir for all that ails them.  They may as well be searching for life on another planet.  Or she could move to Vermont. 

The World Is Funny (Haolam Mats'hik)

THE WORLD IS FUNNY (Haolam Mats'hik)      B                   

Israel  (122 mi)  2012  d:  Shemi Zarhin

Damned if I know, the world is funny so I laugh.   —Gashash, Israeli comedy trio

One of the more convoluted narratives you’ll ever find at the movies, where the film itself is an amusing play on language and culture, weaving together various strands of people’s lives, utilizing twenty or more characters, all of whom are missing something essential.  The director is also a novelist and accomplished screenwriter, digging into Israeli culture to examine the influence of the comedy trio Gashash, the most influential comedy act in the history of Israel, suggesting comedy is a an outlet for dealing with the anxiety of living in the Middle East.  Shot in Tiberias, a town in the northern region known for always being sunny, constantly referenced by the comedy trio, where Golan (Eli Finish) runs a radio show that pays tribute to the Gashash, doing bits and pieces of their act on the air as he broadcasts classic skits that are filled with clever, rapidfire wordplay.  Assisting him on the show is Zafi (Naama Shitrit), as both of them know the skits inside and out, where she also becomes the film’s central narrator, participating in a writing workshop at the town library, which is a wonderfully inventive device, where she is renowned for devising stories with no end.  Without any real narrative, Zarhin instead mixes together vignettes, flashbacks, oral stories, and parts of people’s lives as the connecting tissue of the film, where much of this seems to connect a single family together, several of whom haven’t seen or spoken together in nearly a decade.

Yardena (Assi Levi) works at a travel agency and is shocked to discover she’s pregnant, as she hasn’t had sex with her husband since the death of their daughter while serving in the army several years earlier, becoming consumed with the possibilities of who may have impregnated her without her knowledge.  Meron (Dani Shteg) lost his wife in a terrible car accident 8 years ago, while his older son Nessi (Moshe Ashkenazi) has been in a coma since the accident, but is starting to come awake for brief periods, which is something of a miracle, but when he fully awakes he still has the mental capacity of a ten year old.  The aforementioned Golan is wholeheartedly in love with Natasha, Ola Schor, and wants to marry her but she is dying from a mostly untreatable form of cancer that leaves he subject to violent outbursts.  Golan has given her the complete set of Gashash comedy on DVD’s, which she watches on her computer from her hospital bed, promising to reunite the group for their wedding, as they retired after the death of one of the trio.  Golan actually meets several times with Shaike, an original member, suggesting he knows the skits so well that he could play the missing member’s part, but Shaike reveals it’s impossible, a term Golan refuses to comprehend when speaking of his fiancé. 

This original often hilarious film is expressed through a heartwarming intimacy, where Zafi literally wanders in and out of people’s lives as a cleaning lady, where her real passion is listening to people’s stories, discovering the things they keep secret or the habits that define them, which she reiterates in the writing workshops, which we learn is a forum for damaged people, where over time secrets are revealed for several of the members, while the others remain a mystery.  The film earned 15 Israeli Ophir nominations, the equivalent of Academy Awards, though garnered no wins, as this evocative work may prove to be too difficult for some to follow, though it moves effortlessly between humor and tragedy, most always striking a balance through a quirky, continuously energized script.  The use of locations is excellent, the characters deftly realized, where the viewers are sure to experience real passions from the intense personal drama taking place onscreen, as this strange mix is really unlike other films, using a constantly evolving, somewhat experimental narrative, where it often feels like the director is toying with the idea of how to present the material, especially the way the lives are interconnected and eventually come together.  As an expression of healing the film is profoundly moving, with likable characters sharing a curiosity about the world around them, especially Nessi, whose wild-eyed innocence becomes synonymous with renewed life or rebirth, like Yardena’s curiously unexplained pregnancy (or Immaculate Conception), a curious plot device in an Israeli film.  With so many tragic undertones, the film relies upon with the use of humor in the shifting narratives, moving from past to present, becoming overcomplicated with so many characters and a bit absurd at times, but ultimately it’s a clever treatise that incorporates death and tragedy into the multi-layered fabric of the living. 

Doctored

 Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski






DOCTORED               C                    

USA  (100 mi)  2012  d:  Bobby Sheehan                     Official site

This is a follow up subject wise to other documentaries like Burzynski (2010), which are like cries from the wilderness, literally pleas to the American public to reconsider their course of standard medical treatment, as doctors, whether well-intentioned or not, have become joined at the hip to the pharmaceutical industry, so much so that their end goal after a patient examination is usually what drug(s) to prescribe, usually long term with refills, as if this is what the patient wants to hear.  While this documentary is largely one-sided, most likely financed by chiropractors, it initially explores how chiropractors can often remedy the physical effects of excessive drug use on the human body, literally bringing a body back to its natural health.  Historically, however, they are seen as “quack” treatment by the American Medical Association that prefers to set the standards for the industry, and doesn’t take well to outsiders who don’t walk to the beat of their drum.  Repeatedly those that practice alternative medicines hear this same label, but they exist largely because patients are dissatisfied with a life of living with pain, or being sent home to die from some incurable disease, refusing to accept this is how they’ll be forced to spend the rest of their lives, where they’re desperately seeking another choice.  Some of the time, the key word being some, the results are miraculous, despite examining the debilitating effects of chronic pain, frozen shoulder syndrome, multiple sclerosis, Lyme disease, autism, and cancer, where at least sometimes the body can heal itself if given the right impetus.  Nonetheless, alternative medicine is often not covered by major insurance companies, including Medicare or Medicaid, where only a limited amount of services pass government scrutiny, while the rest is still considered experimental medicine. 

Some of the facts presented suggest some children are mandated to take as many as 26 different immunizations despite the potential health risks to a small percentage, but when such large numbers are required to comply with the requirements, these numbers add up, as it’s not just a few children that suffer adverse affects.  A separate court system has been implemented just for these specific cases, as you cannot sue the government for requiring immunizations, which have easily saved millions of lives, but they’ve also damaged quite a few who have been paid billions as compensation for the adverse effects.  No numbers or statistics were provided, only that the risk is often never explained to the families.  When examining the history of large pharmaceutical companies, they pay out whopping fines as well due to adverse health effects, including deaths, some payouts in the billions of dollars, which is considered the cost of doing business, as they are making gargantuan profits, where the government refuses to shut them down as they also provide so many other needed medicines.  Much of this plays out like the cigarette manufacturing business, where for decades the nation was in denial over the health risks, where one of the worse offenses was the way the industry targeted youth as the next generation of cigarette smokers.  In much the same way, the pharmaceutical industry is also targeting children, where certain psychiatric medicine led to inexplicable suicides in young children, where they were used as guinea pigs, taking medicine where no one really knew the risks involved until it was too late, sounding very much like the use of lobotomies of the 40’s and 50’s, or thalidomide in the 60’s.  In the 70’s and 80’s the preferred psychiatric medication was Valium and Xanax, where researchers later discovered the depressed effect they have on the brain, making them the most misused prescription drugs on the market.  The suggestion here is that to pharmaceutical companies, doctors are simply suppliers, or “whores” as they are called in the industry, where their aim is to find compliant practitioners to partner their drugs to patients on a permanent basis in order to make huge profits, irrespective of the potential ill effects they have on humans, where the kind of damage they can inflict just from reading the labels often sounds absolutely ridiculous.  

The film improves greatly when they put a human face onscreen that people recognize, such as John Stockton of the Utah Jazz, whose quick recovery from ankle sprains was due to his team’s chosen chiropractor, who also significantly reduced the team number of games missed from aggravated injuries, as he was able to get these high flying athletes to play pain free.  Olympic skier Picabo Street was also able to recover quickly after a potentially career ending knee injury using the work of a chiropractor, who uses a less invasive procedure, taking a more holistic approach to the human body and how it can best recover.  Perhaps the star of the film is a PhD biochemist Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, the target of multiple harassing lawsuits to discredit his findings, who has won one of the largest legal battles with the Food & Drug Administration in U.S. history, a 14-year journey to obtain FDA approved clinical trials for a cancer fighting treatment known as antineoplaston therapy.  Despite industry claims that his groundbreaking treatment is unproven, Burzynski is the only scientist in history to have cured a childhood inoperable brainstem glioma.  Among the most effective screen characters was an Inuit Alaskan Iditarod announcer whose family had a history of lupus, where her mother eventually committed suicide, yet after considerable effort in diagnosing her own illness, she discovered it may be the presence of Lyme disease instead, which through the help of natural health practitioners could be successfully extracted from her system.  Another mother’s infant child was born prematurely but survived, but the family refused to give such a small child Phenobarbital for potential seizures, using the hand healing methods of chiropractics instead which seems to have jump started his brain, making him a much more active and intelligent kid.  While there’s never any attempt to offer a differing point of view, and often there’s little follow up on featured patients, the film also makes an overreaching attempt to tackle genetic modification in the food industry, suggesting there are benefits to eating organic, but they tackle on too much unsubstantiated information at the end which only undermines the credibility of the entire film.  Overall, while common sense suggests patients should integrate a whole body approach to health, including trying the benefits of alternative medicine, the film does play like a chiropractic infomercial.