Lake of Fire

The documentary follows the American argument over abortion from both sides. Anti-abortion campaigners speak: people standing outside the clinics, people who justify killing doctors, people reading from scripture. People defending the right to abortion speak: doctors, lawyers, patients. Noam Chomsky is there, and so is Randall Terry. The film cuts none of them off and softens nobody's words. It also shows the procedure itself. It hands the viewer no conclusion at the end; what it hands over is how the argument actually gets conducted. Tony Kaye directs; two hours and thirty-two minutes, shot in black and white. He assembled it over sixteen years. It is long and hard to sit through, and how even-handed it really is was itself argued over, because the footage it shows carries its own weight.