Watch Lake of Fire For Free

Sadly Over-hyped

I'll tell you why so serious

How sad is this?

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The only thing important missing from the film is the impact that overturning Roe v Wade might have on the infertility industry. My husband and I had to resort to in vitro in order to conceive our twin boys. Four fertilized eggs were implanted in me. Fortunately, only two remained viable. But what if all four survived? I would have chosen to "reduce" the embryos. As it was my pregnancy was difficult. I went into pre-term labor at 28 weeks. At 32 weeks they had to induce as my babies were starting to kill me. Imagine if I hadn't had the option to "reduce" and all four implanted. What if the law required me to carry the fetuses until my life was in danger instead of "reducing" early in the pregnancy? Or, what if I had 14 embryos, 4 implanted and 10 frozen? Would the frozen ones then be considered "alive" and therefore could not be discarted? What would be the option then? Would I be prosecuted for 10 counts of murder? So I think the film needed to cover this aspect of the debate. Otherwise it was an exceptional documentary.

No matter what your stance is on the Abortion debate, this film will make you reconsider your position.This is where the film is best- when it gets you to merely think about it. Many people either don't or are to stubborn to consider that they are wrong. So who is right? Well, according to "Lake of Fire" everyone is. It never takes a side. However, there are more wackos shown on the Pro-Life side then the Pro-Choice. Many mistake this a bias, but this is more to show understanding rather then to condemn. You may be surprised as I was in some of the information reviled ab out key figures in the Abortion issue such as Roe herself.So, if you are for or against Abortion this film will trouble you equally.I'm talking about actual abortions being shown twice,and crime scene photos of a woman with a hanger in her crotch dead from a failed abortion attempt. It will probably strengthen the view you already have,but you will leave with a better understanding for why your view is opposed.Apart from the subject matter, it is a beautiful film. The music is overall good, if perhapses depressing. The presentation overall is as good as anything Ken Burns has ever made. The time and effort spent on this project is just unprecedented. Truly not a film made for money or awards. Any person is interested in documentaries or is interested in making them would be wise to see this film at least once. Its one of the better achievements in documentary film making since "Hearts and Minds".

when i first heard that Tony Kaye – who, let's remember, first made the scene as a self-proclaimed "hype artist" – was releasing a documentary about abortion, i was understandably skeptical. turns out my apprehension wasn't necessary. this is a level-headed, even-handed analysis of a difficult and complex subject. regardless of where you might fall on the spectrum of debate, this film will raise questions that deserve reflection. and, needless to say, this is an issue which warrants attention and discussion – at the heart of the issue are some of the most fundamental questions about life; surrounding the issue, however, are myriad paradoxes, contradictions, and dilemmas... if the details and gray areas seem unresolvable, how does one contend with the big picture? the speakers assembled represent the range and nuances of the debate well; some of the images are graphic but integral; and for the most part the irrationality and unhinged emotion that often cloud this subject are avoided. i wonder about the use of B&W, both from a theoretical standpoint (the obvious point that this is not a B&W issue, for instance – or is that meant ironically? – but also the fact that some footage from primary sources had to be manipulated into B&W which might raise some thoughts about documentary technique) and from an artistic standpoint (B&W often providing a feeling of remove between viewer and image, lacking the immediacy of color... although, with this subject, perhaps making use of this sense of remove is a wise choice). this is a film which deserves to be seen – which also deserves to be widely shown in schools – but will probably never find a large audience. and – i'm only speculating here – my guess is that most of those audience members will be primarily from one side of the spectrum.

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.