Daily Archives: November 11, 1988

The Year My Voice Broke

An Australian memory piece written and directed by John Duigan, set in New South Wales in 1962. Danny (Noah Taylor), a teenager, has an obsessive crush on Freya (Loene Carmen), an older childhood friend, and when she starts to become romantically involved with Trevor (Ben Mendlesohn), his loyalty is put to the test. Although most of this is rather familiar stuff, even in a small-town Australian setting, the treatment is sufficiently sincere and nuanced to give it a touch of poignancy; the overall modesty and sweetness of the performances help. Note: This film sneaked in last week before we had a chance to recommend it, and will be gone after these last screenings. (Fine Arts, matinees, Friday and Saturday, November 11 and 12) Read more

Hoxsey: How Healing Becomes a Crime

A fascinating documentary by Ken Ausubel that starts off as provocative muckraking and winds up as an informative and thoughtful essay. The muckraking concerns former coal miner Harry Hoxsey and his virtually lifelong battle with the American Medical Association about his apparently effective folk remedies for cancer. The AMA and the U.S. government essentially outlawed Hoxsey’s practice in the U.S., but his remedies are still used today in a clinic in Tijuana. The essay, more historical in nature, concerns the ongoing battle between the “established” medical profession as we know it today and the alternative practices of folk medicine. Along the way are some fascinating glimpses into the profitable aspects for doctors of conventional cancer treatment and the ambiguities about Hoxsey’s controversial and still scientifically untested methods (Hoxsey himself ultimately died of cancer). (Chicago Filmmakers, 1229 W. Belmont, Friday and Saturday, November 11 and 12, 8:00; Sunday, November 13, 1:00, 2:30, and 4:00; and Monday through Thursday, November 14 through 17, 6:00 and 8:00; 281-8788). Read more

Hotel Terminus

Running close to five hours with an intermission, Marcel Ophuls’s fascinating portrait of the Nazi “Butcher of Lyons,” who later went onto work for the U.S. Counterintelligence Corps and pursue a career as a drug and information trafficker in Bolivia, is a worthy successor to Ophuls’s earlier The Sorrow and the Pity. While the format is basically talking-heads interviews with acquaintances and victims of Barbie (as well as other specialists), arranged in order to give a lucid chronological account of his career, Ophuls manages to treat his subject with a great deal of intelligence and irony–households with Christmas decor are plentiful among the settings–and only occasionally does he overplay his intermittent bent toward whimsy (e.g., looking under cabbages for a subject who doesn’t want to be interviewed). Nearly a hundred people are interviewed in the film, but the film represents only about a 14th of what Ophuls shot, and there is little sense of excess in the running time. This isn’t a work of art in the sense that Shoah is, but it is investigative journalism at its best, solid and penetrating. (Starts Saturday, November 12, Fine Arts, Old Orchard) Read more