My mind is reeling with the knowledge that with the termination of Roe vs. Wade made official, enormous waves of trauma and pain and grief will sweep across the country.
As much as I dislike the act of abortion and as queasy as I feel about abortions at 23 or 24 weeks, the right of women to choose whether to have a baby or not must be absolute. It should not be rescinded. Their bodies, their call.
Today is a black day for women everywhere, and a black day in American history. I’m very, very sorry.
Posted on 12.1.21: “I’ve mentioned before that something happened inside me several months ago, back when Jett and Cait‘s daughter, the recently born Sutton, was growing inside Cait. Suddenly the idea of terminating a fetus’s life was no longer an abstraction. I was especially disturbed by the idea of terminating a fetus at 24 weeks, which suddenly seemed wrong on some primal level. The Roe v. Wade law stipulated 24 weeks because that’s the point at which fetuses become viable, yes, but why so long into the pregnancy? Why not 18 or 20 weeks?”
Jack Nicholson to Rolling Stone in 1984: “I’m very contra my constituency in terms of abortion because I’m positively against it. I don’t have the right to any other view. My only emotion is gratitude, literally, for my life. I’m pro-choice but against abortion because I’m an illegitimate child myself and it would be hypocritical to take any other position.”
“Alito Absolutism Is A Brutal Thing,” posted on 5.14.22:
Bill Maher: “The current abortion divide between the states ‘makes me think about the Civil War…pre-Civil War. Because we seem to be going toward this place in America where we’re gonna be two countries. One where you’re a free woman, and another in which it’s a Dred Scott situation.
“When you look at some of the things that are being proposed in some of these [red] states. I mean, Louisiana says flat-out that [abortion] is homicide. When you drive from L.A. to Nevada…on one side of the border you’re a free person and on the other side you’re a criminal. You can fly across the country and gain and lose your reproductive rights 20 times.”
Posted on 6.17.22: Last night I finally caught Audrey Diwan’s Happening, which is easily the most sobering, harrowing and artful abortion drama I’ve seen since Cristian Mungiu‘s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, which premiered at Cannes almost exactly 15 years ago.
Happening premiered at the 2021 Venice Film Festival (where it won the Golden Lion), but IFC Films didn’t open it theatrically until last month with streaming set to launch on 6.21. So it’s shooting right to the top of HE’s best of 2022 list.
I wouldn’t call Happening a “horror film,” but in its plain, frank and unfettered way it comes close to that. Honestly? The conservative wing of the Supreme Court should watch it before rendering their final positions on Roe vs. Wade.
Based on Annie Ernaux’s 2011 memoir and set in a small French town in 1963, or 12 years before abortion was finally legalized in that country, it’s about Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei), a bright 23 year-old college student who finds herself unwelcomely knocked up. “I’d like a child one day,” she tells one of the doctors she goes to, “but not instead of a life.” She wants agency, to possibly write — a woman at least a decade ahead of her time.
The film is about Anne’s agonizing attempts to terminate, and I’m telling you right now what she and the audience go through together at times is not easy to sit through. Three scenes are especially tough. We’re talking graphic, “God, this is awful”, avert-your-eyes stuff.
But it’s the honest truth, and given the film’s low-key, straight-up directness and uncomfortable naturalism there’s no way to respond except with admiration and awe.
The film lasts 100 minutes, and there’s not a single moment that feels theatrical or manipulative or over-cooked.
Vartolomei, 24, doesn’t “play” Anne as much as submit to the reality of the story — she’s just there, quietly alarmed, trying to figure it out, guarded, persistent and going through hell.
In his 5.12.22 review, Newsday‘s Rafer Guzman wrote something very strange: “Whether you condone this film or condemn it, Happening presents a brutal reality.” Condemn it? Who the hell would condemn an honest account of what a young pregnant woman went through 60 years ago? Pro-life fanatics, I suppose, but God.
HE to critic friendo: “Happening is drop-dead brilliant — the best anguish-of-women film since 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Have you seen it?
Friendo to HE: “Haven’t yet, will check it out.”
HE to friendo: “I can understand a woman who’s been through an abortion not wanting to see this. A friend has never seen 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days for this reason. I said to her that 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days “is not an ‘abortion film’ — it’s a Cristian Mungiu film.’”
Friendo to HE: “But it’s totally an abortion film. I think 4 Months is an unassailable work of cinema, although I found it painful to watch and, truth to tell, a touch arduous, though I don’t deny that it’s superbly done. If you look at the box office grosses for Happening, you’ll see it’s not a film that even what’s left of the art-house audience has much interest in seeing.”
HE to friendo: “But it’s a forecast of what’s to come after Roe is trashed.”
Friendo to HE: “I think that political issue transcends movies. Frankly, I have not seen a drama about abortion that truly confronts what I think is the most complicated factor in the issue: how much certain women are haunted by having abortions, and in any number of cases regret it.”