Short of banning sex altogether, there may not be much we can do to resolve the abortion debate in this country, because both sides are dug in for the long haul. But one of the refreshing things about Tony Kaye's thought-provoking documentary Lake of Fire is that it makes you realize there aren't just two sides to the debate. There are myriad sides, each of them coming at the fundamental questions of life from its own slightly different angle. Clocking in at over two and a half hours, the movie might seem a little long if it weren't so consistently informative and, yes, entertaining. And they're all here, from the religious extremists to the secular moderates, the religious moderates to the secular extremists (which is how the religious extremists see the secular moderates).
Kaye tries to be as even-handed as possible, but there's a shot in there of a mutilated fetus that could set the pro-choice movement back a good 35 years, before Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court may do that on its own, of course, so Lake of Fire is nothing if not timely, despite having been largely put together in the '90s, when the Clinton administration was bearing the brunt of the pro-life movement's wrath. Snipers and bombers - it's hard not to feel like there's a war going on, but Kaye holds out an olive branch by shooting everything in black-and-white. This detaches us a bit, allows us to think our way through our positions, causes us to realize that, although everything seems to be in black-and-white, it's actually all shades of gray.
