January 22, 2009

Lake of Fire



I watched this documentary by Tony Kaye twice last week. It had been on my mind to see, though I never felt up to it. It it, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful and powerful films I have ever seen in my life. He spent 18 years making it. The care and even hand found within are profound. The feel, pacing, look and content are overwhelming. I figured this was a good day to post up the trailer.

4 comments:

erin said...

i watched this a while back, maybe a year ago. so amazing. it's pretty intense to watch an abortion being performed and not feel like there's an overt subtext. even-handed for sure.
on a similar topic, i've got "4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days" in my queue and looking forward to checking it out

dan said...

4 months is a really good movie, but a TOTAL downer, obviously. a really unsettling document about what might happen if abortion were not only outlawed, but legislated - i.e. in the film, the longer one waits, the higher the penalty of conviction for performing the illegal operation. (this where the title comes from) adds a fucked up kind of depth to the whole situation.

i've always avoided lake of fire due to the tagline: "from the director of american history X"... a movie i hated and thought was passive-aggressively racist. but neither of you guys seem likely to fall for that shit, so maybe i'll check this one out. the hollywood video down the street has it, oddly enough!

cjs said...

Dab, it's a truly beautiful film. I was knocked over by it and found myself holding my breath at times. Ask TC, it's all I talked about for a few days after seeing. It's just amazing to see a perfect film anymore. Lake of Fire nailed it on every level.

It's weird, Lake of Fire, 4 Months and fucking Juno were all released within months of each other. What a trio.

dan said...

huh. yeah, i avoided juno but i read a few reviews that referred to 4 months as the "anti-juno", whatever that means. i think that todd solondz thing came out around then too, to add another entry. i can't remember the name of it though. it's a pretty bad movie. i like it when things sync up like that though... zeitgeist, etc...