LilMtnCbn
10-20-2004, 07:13 AM
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/20/1097951764337.html?oneclick=true
My Flesh and Blood
October 21, 2004
Reviewer Sandra Hall explores the perennial moral question with documentaries:
should we really be watching?
Directed by Jonathan Karsh
Rated M
Cinema Paris, Hayden Cremorne Orpheum
Susan Tom is a saint. How else to describe a woman who chooses to adopt 11
disabled children and bring them up alone in a house in suburban California,
financed by little more than the money she receives through the United States
Government's adoption assistance program?
But Tom is also human, with the usual flaws and fault lines - as are the
children in her care. And it's these fissures which kept documentary-maker
Jonathan Karsh and his crew coming back to her and her family throughout the
year they spent putting together My Flesh and Blood, this complex, poignant and
frequently harrowing account of life with the Toms.
And because there's such a fine line between empathy and voyeurism, parts of
Karsh's footage raise the documentary-maker's perennial moral question: should
we really be watching?
You can tell from the start that Tom takes great pleasure in the company of her
children. A woman whose capacious heart goes with a large, tubby figure, a
serenely unhurried style and a laconic sense of humour, she has a gift for
making them laugh. Whether presiding over a Halloween party or a haircut, she
charms them. And she cheers them up, which is saying something, given the
torments life has otherwise heaped upon them.
Nineteen-year-old Anthony is being consumed by a cruelly painful and crippling
skin disease. Eight-year-old Faith bears disfiguring scars from injuries
suffered in a house fire when she was a baby. Thirteen-year-old Zenia was born
without legs.
And so on, until we get to 15-year-old Joe, whose problems are not as visible,
but just as serious. Along with cystic fibrosis, requiring frequent hospital
treatment, he has attention deficit syndrome exacerbated by an acute case of
puberty blues. A charismatic kid with a husky voice, a quick wit and an
intimidatingly adult manner, Joe is the house's dark spirit.
When we first meet him, he's sitting in a corner on his own, muttering about
how much he hates his sisters. He's not jealous of them, he wants us to know.
He's very glad not to be burnt or to be missing any body parts. He just wants
to get away from them.
This theme gradually grows to fill the picture as the year goes on and Joe
learns that his birth mother, whom he's recently got to know again, is about to
remarry. The film takes us to the wedding of this woman who gave birth to him
when she was 17 and on drugs. Now healthy, she greets him with great affection,
and you can see that Joe nurtures thoughts of living with her again. And even
more clearly, you can tell he hasn't a hope.
Back at home after the wedding, he becomes even more truculent and unhappy. He
also reacts against the presence of the cameras - which seems reasonable. If I
were as distressed as he is, I'd want to do my suffering in private, too. Yet
it's a thought which seems lost on Tom, and the cameras stay as tensions rise.
It's unnerving to watch, yet it also makes you realise that a measure of
insensitivity is essential to Tom's survival. It goes with the stoicism that
keeps the household ticking over. If she stops to reflect, she'll break.
You can see it when she tries to explain how she found the stamina and resolve
for such a life, for she has no real answer.
Now in her early 50s, she began to adopt about 20 years ago, having had two
able-bodied sons of her own. Not long afterwards, her marriage buckled under
the strain of what she had taken on, yet she makes these upheavals sound about
as unsettling as a plumbing crisis or a power black-out. If you're already
looking after four children, she says casually, it's not so hard to make it
five or six - or 12.
It's only when her mother comes to visit for the first time in six years that
we get some inkling of how it must have been. While full of admiration for what
Tom is doing, her mother sees the reasons in her own inadequacies as a parent.
Susan, she admits, was thrust into the job of taking care of her younger
siblings because she herself had no patience with children: I made her a
mother.
And now the pattern is being repeated in Tom's treatment of her eldest
daughter, 18-year-old Margaret, the first child she adopted. Free of the
illness she suffered as a child, Korean-born Margaret has become Tom's chief
aide in caring for the other children and, as she tearfully confesses to the
camera in one of the film's rawest scenes, she feels sadly taken for granted.
I've made Tom's household sound miserable - which it isn't. Even when things
are going badly, it's clear the children in her care feel loved, protected -
and just as important - entertained. They're friendly and articulate. The woman
is a hero and Karsh has produced a mesmerising tribute to her. Nonetheless,
it's hard to feel wholehearted about it, for standing in the way is the memory
of poor Joe yelling for the camera to be turned off. By ignoring that appeal,
Karsh makes voyeurs of us, after all.
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
My Flesh and Blood
October 21, 2004
Reviewer Sandra Hall explores the perennial moral question with documentaries:
should we really be watching?
Directed by Jonathan Karsh
Rated M
Cinema Paris, Hayden Cremorne Orpheum
Susan Tom is a saint. How else to describe a woman who chooses to adopt 11
disabled children and bring them up alone in a house in suburban California,
financed by little more than the money she receives through the United States
Government's adoption assistance program?
But Tom is also human, with the usual flaws and fault lines - as are the
children in her care. And it's these fissures which kept documentary-maker
Jonathan Karsh and his crew coming back to her and her family throughout the
year they spent putting together My Flesh and Blood, this complex, poignant and
frequently harrowing account of life with the Toms.
And because there's such a fine line between empathy and voyeurism, parts of
Karsh's footage raise the documentary-maker's perennial moral question: should
we really be watching?
You can tell from the start that Tom takes great pleasure in the company of her
children. A woman whose capacious heart goes with a large, tubby figure, a
serenely unhurried style and a laconic sense of humour, she has a gift for
making them laugh. Whether presiding over a Halloween party or a haircut, she
charms them. And she cheers them up, which is saying something, given the
torments life has otherwise heaped upon them.
Nineteen-year-old Anthony is being consumed by a cruelly painful and crippling
skin disease. Eight-year-old Faith bears disfiguring scars from injuries
suffered in a house fire when she was a baby. Thirteen-year-old Zenia was born
without legs.
And so on, until we get to 15-year-old Joe, whose problems are not as visible,
but just as serious. Along with cystic fibrosis, requiring frequent hospital
treatment, he has attention deficit syndrome exacerbated by an acute case of
puberty blues. A charismatic kid with a husky voice, a quick wit and an
intimidatingly adult manner, Joe is the house's dark spirit.
When we first meet him, he's sitting in a corner on his own, muttering about
how much he hates his sisters. He's not jealous of them, he wants us to know.
He's very glad not to be burnt or to be missing any body parts. He just wants
to get away from them.
This theme gradually grows to fill the picture as the year goes on and Joe
learns that his birth mother, whom he's recently got to know again, is about to
remarry. The film takes us to the wedding of this woman who gave birth to him
when she was 17 and on drugs. Now healthy, she greets him with great affection,
and you can see that Joe nurtures thoughts of living with her again. And even
more clearly, you can tell he hasn't a hope.
Back at home after the wedding, he becomes even more truculent and unhappy. He
also reacts against the presence of the cameras - which seems reasonable. If I
were as distressed as he is, I'd want to do my suffering in private, too. Yet
it's a thought which seems lost on Tom, and the cameras stay as tensions rise.
It's unnerving to watch, yet it also makes you realise that a measure of
insensitivity is essential to Tom's survival. It goes with the stoicism that
keeps the household ticking over. If she stops to reflect, she'll break.
You can see it when she tries to explain how she found the stamina and resolve
for such a life, for she has no real answer.
Now in her early 50s, she began to adopt about 20 years ago, having had two
able-bodied sons of her own. Not long afterwards, her marriage buckled under
the strain of what she had taken on, yet she makes these upheavals sound about
as unsettling as a plumbing crisis or a power black-out. If you're already
looking after four children, she says casually, it's not so hard to make it
five or six - or 12.
It's only when her mother comes to visit for the first time in six years that
we get some inkling of how it must have been. While full of admiration for what
Tom is doing, her mother sees the reasons in her own inadequacies as a parent.
Susan, she admits, was thrust into the job of taking care of her younger
siblings because she herself had no patience with children: I made her a
mother.
And now the pattern is being repeated in Tom's treatment of her eldest
daughter, 18-year-old Margaret, the first child she adopted. Free of the
illness she suffered as a child, Korean-born Margaret has become Tom's chief
aide in caring for the other children and, as she tearfully confesses to the
camera in one of the film's rawest scenes, she feels sadly taken for granted.
I've made Tom's household sound miserable - which it isn't. Even when things
are going badly, it's clear the children in her care feel loved, protected -
and just as important - entertained. They're friendly and articulate. The woman
is a hero and Karsh has produced a mesmerising tribute to her. Nonetheless,
it's hard to feel wholehearted about it, for standing in the way is the memory
of poor Joe yelling for the camera to be turned off. By ignoring that appeal,
Karsh makes voyeurs of us, after all.
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
