Dr. Susan Robinson has to make difficult choices when deciding whether to perform a late abortion
AFTER TILLER (Martha Shane & Lana Wilson, 2013)
Film Forum, 209 West Houston St., 212-727-8110
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 212-875-5600
Opens Friday, September 20
www.aftertillermovie.com
In After Tiller, directors and producers Martha Shane and Lana Wilson manage to humanize one of the most contentious, controversial, and complicated issues of our age: late abortion. In May 2009, Dr. George Tiller, who specialized in third-trimester abortions, was assassinated in front of his clinic in Wichita, Kansas. That left only four doctors in the United States who performed late abortions, each of whom had either trained or worked with Dr. Tiller. “It was absolutely no question in any of our minds that we were going to keep on doing his work,” one of those four doctors, Susan Robinson, says in the film. As After Tiller begins, Dr. Robinson works with Dr. Shelley Sella at Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Dr. LeRoy Carhart is a former U.S. Air Force colonel who operates the Abortion & Contraception Clinic of Nebraska, and Dr. Warren Hern is director of the Boulder Abortion Clinic in Colorado. Shane and Wilson follow these four dedicated doctors who continue doing their work despite the personal danger associated with their profession, including harassment, murder, assault, and bombings. “When I walk out the door, I expect to be assassinated,” Dr. Hern says. The filmmakers show the doctors in their offices, meeting with women who are requesting late abortions for various reasons; Shane and Wilson also follow the abortion providers into their homes as they go on with their daily lives, offering an intimate portrait of these men and women who are so often called monsters but are firm in their belief that what they are doing is important and absolutely necessary, performing their jobs with care and understanding. However, Dr. Hern wonders if he should stop providing late abortions and just settle down peacefully with his new wife and adopted son, while Dr. Carhart and his wife opt to move out of Nebraska after a law change and meet resistance as they try to move their clinic to Maryland or Virginia.
Dr. Warren Hern is one of only four doctors in America who provides late abortions
The film also reveals that deciding to perform a late abortion is often an extremely difficult choice for the doctors as well as the patients and not something the providers do automatically when a woman comes to them. One of the most compelling scenes occurs when Drs. Sella and Robinson have a heart-wrenching disagreement over whether to proceed with a late abortion for a young woman, evaluating whether her reason is valid enough and lamenting that the ability of the woman to tell her story could affect the final decision. It’s a pivotal moment that also brings into focus the concerns of the American people; while less than one percent of the abortions performed in the country occur in the third trimester, the procedure is often the centerpiece of the antiabortion movement, but even pro-choice supporters will find themselves questioning the efficacy of all late abortions. The women come to the doctors for many reasons, ranging from the health of the child to economic situations to admitting that they either didn’t know or refused to accept that they were pregnant until it was too late. “It’s guilt no matter which way you go,” one desperate patient, whose child would be born with severe disabilities and would likely die within a year, tells Dr. Sella. “Guilt if you go ahead and do what we’re doing, or bring him into this world and then he doesn’t have any quality of life.” Although Shane and Wilson include footage of protestors, news reports, and congressional hearings, After Tiller is a powerful, deeply emotional documentary about the doctors and patients who must make impossible choices and live with their decisions for the rest of their lives. The film, which raises fascinating, difficult questions for which there are no easy answers, opens September 20 at Film Forum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Shane (Bi the Way) and Wilson will be at Film Forum on September 20-21 at the 8:10 screenings and September 22 at 4:30 to discuss the film; they will also participate in a series of Q&As at Lincoln Center, including September 20 at 7:00 with NARAL Pro-Choice New York, September 21 at 7:00 with the New York Abortion Access Fund, September 22 at 3:00 with Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights, and September 26 at 7:00 with Dr. Sara Miller of the Reproductive Health Access Project, in addition to a panel discussion on September 23 at 7:00 with Kassi Underwood of Exhale.
Korean writer-director Hong Sang-soo returned to the New York Film Festival for the fifth time with Night and Day, a character-driven tale about displacement and loneliness. Youngho Kim stars as Sungam, a married painter in his forties who flees South Korea for France after having been turned in for smoking marijuana with U.S. tourists. A fish out of water in Paris, he settles into a Korean neighborhood, spending most of his time with two young art students, Yujeong (Eunhye Park) and Hyunju (Minjeong Seo). He also meets an old girlfriend, Minsun (Youjin Kim), who is still attracted to him. And every night he calls his wife, Sungin (Sujung Hwang), wondering when he’ll be able to return home. Hong (Woman Is the Future of Man, Tale of Cinema) tells the story in a diary-like manner, with interstitials acting like calendar pages. Sometimes a day can be filled with talk of art, a party, and a chance encounter, while others can consist of a brief, random event with no real bearing on the plot, reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, just without the existential cynicism and dark humor. As with 2006’s Woman on the Beach, Hong lets Night and Day go on too long (it clocks in at 141 minutes), with too many inconsequential (even if entertaining) vignettes, but it’s so much fun watching Youngho’s compelling performance that you just might not care about the length. Night and Day is screening September 20 at 9:00 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “NYFF: Opening Act” series, featuring sixteen films from directors whose latest works will be shown at the fifty-first New York Film Festival, which runs September 27 through October 13. “NYFF: Opening Act” also includes outstanding films as Spike Jonze’s Adaptation., Paul Greengrass’s Bloody Sunday, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Maborosi, Joel Coen’s Miller’s Crossing, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse. Hong’s delightful Nobody’s Daughter Haewon screens at this year’s New York Film Festival on September 29 and 30.
