Movie Review: The Bleeding Edge

The Bleeding Edge *** / *****

Directed by: Kirby Dick.

Written by: Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering.

 

The Bleeding Edge is another hot button issue documentary – an advocacy documentary, that looks at an issue, argues its case, and urges viewers to get involved – to take this seriously. These documentaries are always well meaning – and they usually address important subject matter that we really should care about – really should become involved in. They are also usually more than a little dull to actually sit through – favoring statistics over everything else, and then wrapping everything up with an inspirational call to arms. The Bleeding Edge is like that as well – to a certain extent – but it’s still better than most of the films in this vein. In part, it’s because it has a genuinely fascinating subject matter – medical devices, and the lack of regulatory oversite that goes into them. And in part, it’s because director Kirby Dick (and producer/cowriter Amy Ziering) have been doing this for a while, and really know how to make these better than most. No, it isn’t quite the film the pair’s last two films – The Invisible War and The Hunting Ground (the first about sexual assault in the military, the second about sexual assault on college campuses) were – but it’s still better than most.

 

Part of what makes Dick and Ziering’s films better than most is that the strike a good balance between the true life stories they are documenting and the stats about what they are covering. Go too far one way and your doc can easily become sentimental and unconvincing – go too far the other way, and you’re essentially watching a dry, boring lecture.

 

The Bleeding Edge falls victim to neither trap. It focuses on just a few medical devices – and tells the story of the people involved, before slowing zooming out and showing the bigger picture. The films spend the most time on Essure – which was supposed to be a permanent birth control solution for women. Essentially, what it is a piece of metal that is inserted – in what is supposed to be a quick, easy procedure – into the woman’s fallopian tubes, and eventually scar tissue would build up to prevent pregnancy. It didn’t really work though. It caused a lot of bleeding, a lot of pain – often they wouldn’t get implanted properly, and would end up in the woman’s uterus. If you tried to remove them, it would often leave pieces of metal behind – setting off auto-immune disorders. It’s lead to ruined lives, ruined marriages, and lots of other side effects.

 

The filmmaker use this as a jumping off point to examine how medical devices are approved for use by the FDA – not so shockingly, this government agency seems more interested in protecting industry than they are protecting patients. The process seems to go really quickly and easily – and almost everything gets approved, often with little data to back this up. They depend on the industry to self-regulate – which we all know doesn’t work.

 

The film will examine other devices as well – hip replacements with high levels of cobalt, which can cause mental issues. The Da Vinci robot surgeon – which real surgeons are required to have almost no training in before using on real patients. Mesh, which is supposed to help repair a woman’s pelvis, that instead becomes a sharp object inside her body.

 

The film is smart enough to tell the real human stories behind the failures of these devices. It doesn’t just rely on stats – arguing that even though the patients they show know what happened to them, that even more study is required – since no one is doing them. The women who have been victimized by Essure, who form a Facebook group which slowly grows to thousands of members, determined to get the product taken off the market, are truly inspiring.

 

No, I don’t think The Bleeding Edge is a particularly great documentary. It is nowhere near Dick’s best work. But it is an important film – one that shines a light on an important issue, and one that isn’t covered very often.

Movie Review: The Hunting Ground

The Hunting Ground
Directed by: Kirby Dick.

Kirby Dick’s The Hunting Ground makes no secret of where it stands on the issue of rape on college campus – clearly with the victims, who report what happened to unfeeling University Administrations, who go through rounds of victim blaming and neglect, making the victims feel even worse. The film doesn’t really pretend to be neutral – and clearly advocates for those who have been victimized, and point the blame not only at the rapists themselves but in the universities who are more interested in money than in protecting their students. If they reported the real number of rapes that happened on campus, people would be less likely to go there, and write those tuition cheques – not to mention the donation cheques from alumni. And if the accused is a member of a big time University sports team, forget it. That is a massive industry, and needs to be protected at all costs. The Hunting Ground is hardly a perfect documentary, both because of things within Dick’s control and things outside of it. The film would have benefitted from hearing from the schools themselves – but none of them are willing to talk to Dick (nor were they willing to talk to CNN in the post screening special of the film earlier this week) – although none of them seem to have problems issuing press releases defending what they do (actually being interviewed would require them to answer questions they don’t want to answer). Dick, who as a documentarian has moved farther and farther into advocacy over the years does perhaps lay things on a little thick at times in the film, and pushes perhaps a little too much. Yet, when the film remains focused on the victims – who tell their stories in their own words – it is a powerful documentary that no one can really argue with.

The film opens with happy scenes – the only ones in the movie – as the film plays the graduation song, as student after student checks online to find out that they have gotten into their dream school – that everything they’ve worked for through high school has now come true. Dick is doing this in bitter, cynical irony (it’s certainly one of the times he perhaps pushes too far), because right after that he will cut to women talking about they were raped by fellow students, even before classes began. Again and again throughout the film, Dick will return to these women who tell the same story again and again – they were raped, they reported it to the administration, who tried to get them to not file an official report, and did little or nothing even if they did. Dick, whose last film The Invisible War, tackled the issue of rape in the military, knows how to make a film about a giant institution looking out for themselves, who see rape as part of the cost of doing business. Neither of these films are as strong as Dick’s own Twist of Faith – about rape by Catholic Priests – and that’s because that film was more narrowly focused – telling an individual story, rather than making a film that casts as wide of a net as The Hunting Ground does. The film is successful because those individual stories still hit hard, and perhaps Dick was right to cast such a wide net, because in doing so it makes the problem harder to dismiss or belittle.

The film doesn’t delve too deep into many of the individual stories – except in the last part of the movie, which really does dive pretty deep into the allegations made against Jameis Winston – then Florida State’s star quarterback, who has since been drafted first overall in the NFL. The movie allows Winston’s accuser to tell her story – and it certainly sounds credible to me – but regardless of whether or not you do believe her, I’m not sure how anyone could be happy with the way the case was handled – where no one even attempted to talk to Winston for months after his alleged victim filed the complaint, the DNA in her rape kit wasn’t tested for more than a year, etc. There are many things that are disturbing about this was handled by the police and university – but not only them but the media and fellow Florida State students and fans –all of whom seem to immediately take Winston’s side, without knowing practically anything (how could they – the police didn’t even know since they barely bother to investigate). This is certainly not an isolated case here – just look at how a hell of lot of hockey fans immediately rallied to Patrick Kane’s defense when he was accused of rape this past summer, or how long it took for anyone to take Bill Cosby’s numerous accusers seriously. The Hunting Ground is about a specific problem of rape on University campuses – but it also at least hints at the problem of how society at large responds to the problem.

Normally, I will admit, I don’t much care for the so called advocacy documentaries – they are usually fairly dull, point and shoot affairs, that end with a call to arms and website address urging the viewer to “Get Involved!”. Even when they are about important issues, the films are needlessly dull – there is no reason to sacrifice artistry in a documentary. The Hunting Ground at times edges towards being that kind of film at times, but never quite crosses that line. The victims, who tell their story in their own words, keep the focus and the anger pointed at the right place throughout the documentary – and makes it one of the more powerful docs to hit theaters this year.

Movie Review: The Invisible War

The Invisible War

Directed by: Kirby Dick.

If you’re a woman who joins the United States military, you are far more likely to be raped than if you didn’t sign up. Not only that, but until recently, the person who decided whether or not an investigation was warranted when someone brought up sexual assault allegations was your unit commander, and according to the stats used by The Invisible War, 25% of women who didn’t report that they were raped didn’t do so because the person who they have to report to, is the person who raped them. Another 30% didn’t report it because the person they have to report to is friends with the person they are accusing. A group of military rape survivors recently had their lawsuit against the government thrown out – essentially because the court ruled that being raped was an occupational hazard of being in the military.

Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War is full of shocking facts like this – all of them which come from the U.S. government itself, including the fact that it is estimated that 22,000 rapes occurred in the military last year, only 3,000 were reported and only 100 led to convictions with any jail time – most of the time, less than 1 year. Some rapists had their ranks reduced though or had other such disciplinary action taken against them.

Dick flashes this statistics up throughout the movie, but wisely, he concentrates on the survivors, who tell their stories to Dick himself. It cannot be easy for these women – and one man – reliving the worst moment of their lives, but they do it because they want things to change. Many of them have the same basic story – of being patriotic and idealistic upon entering the military, only to be raped once they got there. Almost to a person, they part they feel was even worse was the treatment they received when they reported the rapes – nothing was done, and sometimes they even found themselves court martialed for adultery (even though they weren’t married, their rapist was, although they don’t get court martialed) or filing a false claim. They are told repeatedly that they were “asking for it”. One woman is told that she shouldn’t have gone out drinking with the men – although it was understood to be part of their job. Another is told she was dressed proactively, even though she was wearing her official dress uniform, which includes a skirt. The military has known this is a problem for years, but has merely paid it lip service – including ridiculous videos and posters shown to the recruits, one of which offensively advises men to play it safe – wait until she’s sober. This ad campaign also includes helpful hints like using the buddy system, as if being in the military is akin to walking home from elementary school.

The most heartbreaking story in the movie is Kori Cioca, who was raped when she was in the Coast Guard, and had her jaw broken by her attacker. She needs surgery to get it repaired, but the government is refusing to pay for it – she wasn’t in the Coast Guard long enough (she’s short by two months); although the injuries sustained in the rape were the reason she left. Five years later, she’s still on a soft diet, and battling her way through government bureaucracy.

The movie has already led to some changes, although the military won’t acknowledge it was the film that made it changed, but when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta watches the film, and then two days later decides to take the charging authority away from unit commanders, it’s impossible to deny the two are unrelated. This is not an easy film to watch, but it is an essential film – one that has already inspired some change, but demands that more changes come. This is an important documentary.