Lake of Fire (2006)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I thought this documentary was very fair. Both sides were shown. Some people say it was biased to the left but I do not believe that. I have personally spoken to people who are antiabortion and most of them really do throw their religious beliefs around, like a 2 yr old throws a ball around the house. Basically , the fanatics against abortion , quote every other passage from the bible. Its not the filmmakers fault if these people that are against abortion , come across inarticulate and judgmental and yes for the most part very uneducated as well. The film showed abortion procedures, scenes of crimes, and multiple monologues from people on both sides. The title of the film itself , is proudly proclaimed by the religious right. If these people view this movie they would probably see this as fair. It was a very chilling film , and reinforced the fact that there are people in our very nation that would circumvent the law to push their religion on others. The film was a bit too long and would like to have seen some color to maybe get the true effect , especially on some of the medical procedures and crime scenes. All in all a good film.

We've been taught to believe that the purest and best documentaries are those that take a definitive stand on an issue. Such a one-sided approach is supposed to bespeak a righteous passion on the part of a filmmaker - as if dogmatism, in and of itself, were an indisputable virtue. But what if the issue at hand is so morally complex that it simply doesn't lend itself to the strident arguments and easy answers of a black-and-white diatribe? Might it not, then, be best to drop the "know-it-all" posture of the partisan zealot and, instead, attempt to look at both sides of the issue from a position of objectivity and fairness? Well, that is exactly what filmmaker Tony Kaye has done with "Lake of Fire," a documentary on abortion that attempts to examine both sides of the issue in as unbiased and evenhanded a way as possible. For once, the impassioned spokespersons in both the "pro-life" and "pro-choice" camps are free to have their say and to make their case, without commentary or condemnation from a judgmental third party. In so doing, he has fashioned an unflinching and uncompromising look at one of the issues that most divides Americans today - and will surely do so for a very long time to come..Watching "Lake of Fire" is a bit like being a ping pong ball in a high-stakes table tennis match. Just as we find ourselves agreeing with a representative from one side of the equation, we are bandied back to the opposing side by what appear to be equally compelling arguments emanating from a spokesperson there. And back and forth we go. For while there are "nutcases" and "screwballs" on both sides of the divide (and they certainly get ample opportunity to voice their views here), many of the people who are interviewed offer sound, reasoned arguments for the positions they take. At a lengthy two hours and thirty-two minutes, Kaye's film has plenty of time to take us into the emotionally-charged world of abortion politics, represented most vividly by the impassioned rallies and protest marches that all too often devolve into name-calling shouting matches that cloud the issue and further alienate those in the political center. Moreover, in what is essentially a new American "civil war," both sides come to the battlefield armed with gruesome images of those who have already perished in the conflict - the pro-lifers of dismembered fetuses, the pro-choicers of murdered doctors and victims of "back alley" abortions.Kaye is to be particularly commended for not sanitizing or sugarcoating the actual abortion process, clearly assuming that we are grown up enough to face the truth without the need for coyness or comforting filters. Intriguingly, Kaye has opted to film his movie in black-and-white rather than color, a very shrewd and wise decision, since the stark imagery serves to underline the seriousness and gravity of the issue.If there's a weakness to the film it is that there may be a bit too much emphasis on the movers and shakers in each of the groups and not enough on the ordinary, average citizens whose lives have been directly affected or severely altered by abortion (or the lack thereof). The movie does, however, end on such a note, taking us along with a young woman as she goes through the step-by-step process of an actual abortion. It reminds us that, after all the speeches and marches, all the clinic protests and killing of doctors, the issue finally comes down to an individual woman and the agonizing decision she alone is being called upon to make.With his film, Kaye clearly wants to make us think, but he doesn't tell us HOW to think - and that's what separates his work from that of so many of his film-making contemporaries. How people will react to this film is anyone's guess. All I know is that, no matter which side of the struggle you may come down on - or even if you have somehow managed to remain scrupulously neutral about it up to this point - "Lake of Fire" will indeed make you think long and hard about the issue.

It seems fitting that I watched this on the very day that I read about the atrocious state of child protection in Oklahoma. It is a reminder of the definition of "Pro-Life" that I believe so strongly: they only care about life before it is born, and are not concerned with life after birth.It was an outstanding documentary that gave both sides of the issue, even to the point of showing an actual abortion being performed. I could have done without that. This is however, the definitive film on the issue.Some may consider it slanted as it showed the pro-life advocates as crazy loons, but when they are self-confessed bigots like leader Randall Terry, and Klan members/ministers like John Burk that consider murderers "patriots," what else can you call them. This film will give you a good picture of where this issue started, and why it continues to this day. You will learn just who is keeping this alive and their reasons for doing so. You will also be well informed on the types of people who are using this issue for their personal causes.Great film to educate you on this sensitive issue.

Be prepared. In Tony Kaye's "Lake of Fire" you will see a portion of an abortion procedure. You will see the dead pieces of a being you cannot simply label "fetus" & thereby distance yourself comfortably from it. You will see crime scenes with the bodies of people executed by anti-abortion zealots. You will also see quite a number of Bible-slappin' loudmouths & pro-choice intellectuals.Being a pro-life viewer, I must give Kaye credit for allowing 2 moments that are very strong for the pro-life camp. The first comes near the beginning of the film, in which we do actually see the dismembered pieces of that aborted baby. This is echoed later with shots of corpses stored in a clinic freezer. The second moment comes with the story of Norma McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade. Kaye presents McCorvey's story of working in abortion clinics after her trial & later converting to Christianity & completely reversing her position toward abortion. McCorvey's conversion came about through the efforts of a man we see here, a man who, incidentally, is perhaps the single non-wacko pro-life leader that Kaye deigns to show: Operation Save America's Flip Benham.Other than those two points, all the scoring goes to the pro-choice crowd. Kaye includes as many homophobic, gun-toting, anti-abortion loudmouths as he can find. And he can't hide his own prejudices when he zeroes in on the mouth of one particular windbag & lets it fill the screen while he rants--a technique, it should be noted, that is never applied when Alan Dershowitz is on screen. Here we have pro-lifers who do the cause no favors by opening their mouths, saying for instance that they think blasphemers should be executed, that they've seen Satan-worshiping abortionists barbecue babies right in front of them, etc. And this spectacle goes on & on, with only one answering clang on the Left. At one point we do see a single leftist dork: a woman singer who dances 95% nude during her performance, shoves a coat hanger in her crotch, & mimes giving herself an abortion & eating the baby. We also get to hear this "artist" speak in an interview, & she is stunningly clueless. But that's it for whack-jobs presented on the Left, & we're clearly meant to come away from the film with the sense that the majority of pro-lifers are sub-mental creeps while the majority of pro-choicers are enlightened, brainy people you'd trust to guide public policy.Nearly all the people interviewed for this documentary use dishonest, loaded arguments: that is, "the Bible says so" (& if you don't believe the Bible, you don't count), or "it's a woman's right" (& obviously the fetus isn't a person, so it doesn't have any rights). The difference is that the people Kaye sought out are primarily intellectuals on one side, and on the other they are primarily uneducated and backwards. The film includes only a few brief seconds of articulate speech on the pro-life side, in contrast with the nonstop barrage of interviews with leftist celebrity intellectuals like Dershowitz, Noam Chomsky, and Peter Singer. Chomsky, who has several PhDs in HairSplitting, gets away here with everything from comparing the religious climate in the U.S. with that in Iran, to raising absurd, overly-clever counterarguments such as his statement that women "kill bacteria" every time they wash their hands (the implication being that killing bacteria is, on some gray scale, morally comparable to killing a fetus). Dershowitz pulls some similar garbage when he says that every time a man & woman refrain from having sex they are preventing a potential human being from being created, & therefore maybe we should have sex 24/7 if we're really going to make God happy. And Singer? Well, he defines murder in terms of "what makes it wrong." That is, murder is killing someone who has the mental capability to wish otherwise, & since a fetus doesn't have the cerebral development allowing him to know what he's missing out on--well, tough. One wonders what Singer might think of killing comatose persons or even victims who are merely sleeping.Particularly disappointing--& revealing, in terms of the documentary's prejudices--is that almost no effort was made to bring in articulate intellectuals from the pro-life camp. You'll see no Peter Kreeft here, no Frederica Mathewes-Green. And while Kaye gives screen time to a conspiracy theory about "Christian Reconstructionism" & the Religious Right's supposed desire to retake the country & execute anyone who doesn't obey the ten commandments, no similar examinations are made of possible conspiracies on the Left. No mention is made, for example, of Planned Parenthood originating from a scandalous soup of eugenics, racism, & elitist, upper-class paranoia directed at the burgeoning lower classes.This pro-choice prejudice is seen further in the film's recurring, sledgehammer theme: pro-life = anti-abortion terrorism. Kaye is little interested in portraying anything but the sensationalistic stereotypes of pro-life activists, & the final portion of the film stresses these stereotypes repeatedly. As the film winds down & we follow a woman into her clinic to see the "brave" choice she's going to make & see that she's an emotionally disturbed woman who really shouldn't raise a child, we get an answering bombardament from the Left. The intellectuals that Kaye brought out earlier now return, & we're given a dizzying number of alternative, gray-scale methods for thinking about abortion, methods for making a simple thing more "complex." For instance, Alan Dershowitz says that when it comes to abortion, "everyone is right." This is a pleasant, non-conclusive answer that will not lead to any hasty overturning of laws.Finally, on a personal note, I was glad I saw this film but can't recommend it. After all, a documentary heavily skewed like this can't be admired for its intrinsic worth. Kaye merely shows us how a film may pay lip service to "fairness" while ending up with a propagandistic message.