Side Effects (2013)

SIDE EFFECTS          B                
USA  (106 mi)  2013  d:  Steven Soderbergh                Official site

What starts out as a pharmaceutical soap opera turns on a dime into an identity thriller, a psychological, behind-the-scenes power play between doctor and patient, where there’s some question about who’s really in control, where blackmail and embezzlement are commonplace, turning this into a moral cesspool where one never knows who’s really holding the cards.  This kind of deception takes on multiple layers of fraud and behind-the-scenes shenanigans that may leave you shaking your head in befuddled puzzlement, not in trying to figure it all out, but in how cheesy it all plays out, becoming overly obvious by the end instead of remaining a mystery.  Except for an HBO made-for-TV Liberace movie called Behind the Candelabra starring Michael Douglas, this is the final movie Soderbergh has lined up, as he intends to take his theatrical abilities elsewhere, supposedly directly into theater, hoping to direct stage plays and perhaps write.  Soderbergh has always made cutting edge films, even the ones that didn’t work were always technically proficient, beautifully shot by the director himself, where he is known for a clean and luminous look to his films.  This one is no exception, as Soderbergh, director, cinematographer, and editor all rolled into one, has always been in the forefront in making quality digital films, where TRAFFIC (2000) ushered in a new era of filmmaking, allowing cameramen to use smaller and more lightweight, highly mobile cameras, making him somewhat responsible for changing the direction of the movie industry away from actual film, for better or for worse, and while others may have failed miserably in making the transition, Soderbergh’s films have continued to look first rate, often indistinguishable from real film.  Lately, perhaps due to more conventional scripts, Soderbergh’s films have failed to impress at the elite level of filmmaking, and while always interesting, none have achieved the level of mastery exhibited prior to his baffling venture into commercial Hollywood filmmaking with OCEAN’S ELEVEN (2001).

While there’s much about this film that works brilliantly, such as the opening sequence where a camera stares from outside a Manhattan building, slowly panning its way inside one particular window where it witnesses the bloody aftermath of a murder, made all the more alluring by the intricately quiet and complex music by Thomas Newman, easily the best thing in the movie.  The movie backtracks several months where a young girl, Emily, played by Rooney Mara, who happens to be the great grand-daughter of Art Rooney, the founder of the Pittsburgh Steelers, is seen trying to gussy herself up for a prison visit with her husband Martin (Channing Tatum), who is nearing the end of his four-year sentence for inside trading.  Emily’s pale and ghost-like appearance suggests the look of a mannequin with fragile, already shattered interior nerves, a woman who turns to prescription medication as a way of handling her anxiety concerning her husband's upcoming release from prison.  When he’s released, she crumbles into deeper despair, inexplicably driving a car head-on into a cement wall, where she survives intact, even more vacant eyed than she was before, but finding herself under the care of a busy hospital shrink Dr. Banks (Jude Law), who treats her with various medicines, but she’s a difficult patient, as she struggles with each and every one, complaining of various side effects which leave her nearly debilitated and unable to function.  At his wits end, he consults her previous psychiatrist, Dr. Siebert, Catherine Zeta-Jones, looking matronly with her hair pulled back in a bun and wearing glasses, who suggests the use of a new medicine on the market.  Having tried everything else with no success, with Emily reduced to zombie status where she’s either sleepless and lethargic all the time or a sleepwalker, up at all hours of the night behaving peculiarly, remembering nothing afterwards, Dr. Banks desperately tries Siebert’s recommendation, which seems to be having a beneficial effect until one of the strange side effects of the drug kicks in with disastrous results, explaining the opening sequence. 

Charged with murder, Emily is sentenced to a psychiatric hospital, innocent by reason of insanity, where she remains under strict psychiatric care.  Due to the fallout from the press, the focus of all the public attention turns on the doctor (Banks) who prescribed the drug, blaming him for the crime, where in the process he loses his practice (from all the negative publicity) and his wife (who receives incriminating evidence implicating her husband sexually with the patient), growing increasingly obsessed by what he finds to be strange coincidences behind Emily and Dr. Siebert, who was working for the drug manufacturer at the time she recommended this particular drug.  Banks begins to think there’s a secret conspiracy going on behind the scenes, where the film suddenly shifts from a pharmaceutical melodrama where Banks has lost everything, desperate to hold onto any shred of his former self, his life literally crumbling before our eyes, into a sophisticated blackmail scheme pitting two accomplished psychiatrists against one another, where the patient herself may hold the key to unlocking this myriad of strange incidents that have led not only to her arrest but to his sudden downfall.  Paranoia fills the air with possible conspiracies, where the police have zero interest, as the case is closed, where all of this accumulating behind-the-scenes drama begins to take center stage, a continuously shifting balance of power that turns into a creepy thriller.  Just as baffling, the public, which was initially so outraged, loses all interest in the case, where Banks himself has become collateral damage, a peculiar side effect to all the strange and bizarre occurrences that led to a perception that Emily was just a victim of circumstances.  Once the police and public perception reaches a neat and tidy conclusion, it’s hard to alter what appears to be yesterday’s headlines, as all of Banks’s attempts to clear his name have an unflatteringly self-centered motivation behind them.  The film is ultimately undone by the melodramatic overkill that attempts to shift the audience’s interest in a whodunit, so to speak, where it becomes less a pharmaceutically inspired, psychological horror story, as alluded to initially, and more of a simple murder mystery that unravels the old fashioned way, through lies, blackmail, and deception, revitalizing the mood of 40’s shadowy film noirs.  Unfortunately, this final chapter comes together all too easily, where the audience’s sympathies in the end are likely to feel cheated.   

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.