BREATHING LESSONS: THE LIFE AND WORK OF MARK O'BRIEN
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
"Everybody becomes disabled unless they die first."
- Mark O'Brien
Jessica Yu won the 1996 Academy Award for her documentary short BREATHING LESSONS: THE LIFE AND WORK OF MARK O'BRIEN. She was in town recently to screen this film as well as two others. (She brought her Oscar with her -- serial number 2850 -- and generously let everyone have a chance to hold it. Holding that Oscar, plus the time President Clinton shook my hand, will be among those small events of my life that I will never forget.)
If you have never heard of the poet, journalist, and remarkable human being called Mark O'Brien, you are not usual. Although a figure known on the Berkeley campus as a man of courage and insight, he is not famous even if he is one of only 119 people still alive who must live in an iron lung.
Yu was at the Telluride film festival showing her whimsical short called SOUR DEATH BALLS when the head of the Pacific News Service, for whom Mark works, approached her with the idea of making a documentary on Mark's life. Yu said she was pleased that they had the faith that she could make serious films as well.
BREATHING LESSONS works both because of Yu's artistic decisions on how to approach the project and because of O'Brien's articulateness and his open honesty. He wanted to discuss subjects that most people might shy away from in his condition. (He has partial control of his head, but little else.) He discusses everything from God (he is very religious) to sex (he wants it so bad he even paid a "sex surrogate" in 1987).
O'Brien calls his iron lung, "a huge and ugly machine," which it certainly is. With few living polio patients left requiring iron lungs, the medical industry has little incentive to devise something more efficacious than this hideous looking piece of 1950's technology.
(The film hit home for me. O'Brien was born in 1949, only 3 years after I was. I still remember being kept inside during the summer months. The belief was that the virus was airborne, and the warm weather was when it was most likely to strike. People at the time did not know whether this theory was valid or pure quackery, but without a serum to prevent the disease, parents tried whatever they could. Polio struck intense fear into every parent's heart in the early 50's.)
Yu managed to find many old photos and clips of O'Brien and his family. He was close to his parents, and they saved his life. They made the crucial decision to keep him at home rather than packing him off to a nursing home, where polio patients then lived, on average, only 18 months. Later in his life, he did spend two years in a nursing home, which scared him badly. Today he lives in his own apartment where he can and does fire his attendants if they prove incompetent. His points out that it costs the government $1,800 a month at home and $5,000 if they institutionalize him so that both parties are getting a good deal by his being in his own place.
While getting his undergraduate degree at Berkeley, O'Brien traveled around campus on a movable bed that he controlled with his mouth. Old footage of this adds extra poignancy and immediacy to the picture.
Like the 1992 documentary, A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, on physicist Stephen Hawking, BREATHING LESSONS comes alive as O'Brien talks about his theories. O'Brien's thoughts are more down to earth than Hawking's but nevertheless intriguing. Yu manages to know how to ask just the right questions to draw him out and has an excellent sense of how to collect her material into a compelling whole.
After the screening I got a chance to talk with Yu, and she told me that O'Brien has had the most wonderful thing happen to him. He has his first girlfriend, and he is happier than she has ever seen him.
Yu said that she is working now on the possibility of turning O'Brien's story into a full length drama and has a studio interested. The most recent work of hers to get wide distribution is an hour long documentary on Civil War reenactors. PBS picked it up, and the local stations have been showing it, with each station presenting it on a different date.
Finally, if you saw the Academy Awards, you will remember her from her acceptance speech where she mused her dress cost more than her film. (She points out that the Academy has a room full of designer gowns and precious jewels for the women to wear. But, like Cinderella, you have to bring them back the next morning.) So was her joke true? Almost. She said that her movie cost a little more than her gown, but less than just one of her earrings.
BREATHING LESSONS runs a little under 40 minutes. The film is subtitled in English since about 10 percent of O'Brien's speech can be difficult to understand. The film is not rated but might be PG-13 for the discussion of sex. It would be fine for kids say nine or ten and up to see. I recommend it to you and give it ***.
**** = A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = Totally and painfully unbearable picture.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: April 20, 1997
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
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