LORENZO'S OIL
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: How did two parents with no medical background find a cure for the previously terminal disease that afflicted their son? You actually will understand, step by step in this true story part intellectual puzzle, part political statement about the medical community, part story of a family medical tragedy. We need more films like this. Rating: +3 (-4 to +4).
A friend heard I was going to see LORENZO'S OIL and said we should be sure to take handkerchiefs. He had seen one LORENZO'S OIL. My wife saw the film as a political tract against the medical establishment. She saw a different LORENZO'S OIL. The film I saw was neither of those two movies. I saw a film that was the logical successor to THE STORY OF LOUIS PASTEUR and particularly DR. EHRLICH'S MAGIC BULLET. It is the story of people who start with a scientific puzzle that is also a tragic problem. And step by step, with the tragedy eating at them, they solve the problem. And though it is about a complex medical problem, the solution process is always comprehensible, so much so that at one point I found myself whispering to my wife the solution to a piece of the puzzle that the characters had not yet figured out. Here I am learning about a disease I'd never heard of when I saw down and I wanted to shout a medical hypothesis at the screen. (I was right, too, except what I called a "constructor" they called an "enzyme.") Anyway, that is the film I saw and I had a great time!
This is a true story as enthralling as any from Paul de Kruif's MICROBE HUNTERS or Berton Roueche's accounts of medical detective work. Augusto Odone (played by Nick Nolte) and his wife Michaela (played by Susan Sarandon) are perplexed when their five-year-old son Lorenzo (played by Zack O'Malley Greenburg) starts throwing fits of anger and losing his coordination. Eventually the boy is diagnosed as having an invariably fatal disease, adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD). Because the disease is so rare, the medical community had funding for only limited research. Less effort seemed to be expended in research than in helping parents cope with the medical crisis. So Augusto and Michaela, neither with a medical background, set out to do their own research and, remarkably, found their own cure. (Not really a unique story, however. When the nuclear physicist Leo Szilard developed a terminal case of bladder cancer, he turned his attention from physics to medicine and discovered his own cure. This was a case of "physicist, heal thyself." Of course, Odone was not even a scientist. He was a banker.)
Susan Sarandon does a very good job of conveying the anxiety of a mother trying desperately to save her child and coping with a senseless guilt because genetically ALD is passed by the mother. Nick Nolte has problems with the Italian accent, but otherwise is quite good. Peter Ustinov is, as always, a pleasure to watch, in a role not quite fair to the medical community. George Miller, best know for the "Mad Max" films, directed and co-wrote the screenplay. As a physician himself, he can explain the medical aspects in nice, clear, simple terms. His direction is, however, a bit heavy on religious imagery and in gratuitous overhead shots.
This is a film written for an intelligent audience, and intelligent audiences should find it very rewarding. My rating is +3 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper
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