Good story, Not enough for a whole film

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

A Brilliant Conflict

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I saw this film first on HBO and found it stunning, brilliant and heart wrenching. Most people, (I hope), never get to discover how much pain and suffering the human body can actually inflict on the human spirit. This film is largely about that. Therefore, I must caution this is not for the fainthearted.This is an important film. More so than PULP FICTION or THE AVENGERS or other like minded fantasies, because it shows in a very adult fashion what true evil and true heroism is really all about. The thematic level of this film could not be any higher. I credit it for giving you a small albeit hyper-real glimpse into what parents all over the world go through everyday of their lives as they raise their children through the vicissitudes of life in what can be a menacing world. Nick Nolte as Augusto Odone and Susan Sarandon as Michaela Odone have given birth and are raising a bright, precocious little boy they have named Lorenzo as played by half a dozen actors including Zack O'Malley. He has already learned three languages before his seventh birthday and his parents are wistfully looking down the road to his being a possible Harvard graduate when tragedy strikes. He begins exhibiting behavioral problems, memory lapses and tantrums. When he is taken to the doctors, he is diagnosed with adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), a degenerative brain disease that takes the life of the affected party usually within two years. Lorenzo's parents, instead of quietly resigning themselves to accept Lorenzo's fate, do what almost any parent I know would do in such an instance. They pull out all the stops and make great sacrifices with regard to their own personal needs in order to extend and improve the quality of life for their child. This is so universally true about parents both for the observer and those with real life experience raising children it hardly needs comment here.This is a story about who the real heroes of the world are; they are the people who are trying preserve and enhance life at all costs regardless of their personal shortcomings or limitations of cultural or social training. The doctors tell the Odones that their son has at most two more years to live. Do they listen? Oh no, out of some panicked, primal urgency to lessen Lorenzo's suffering and protect the family unit no matter what, the Odones organize their lives around their son's need for round-the-clock care and Augusto Odone out of necessity becomes expert enough to invent a medicine that can ease the suffering of those with ALD and act as a preventative in many cases for those who are predisposed to suffer from the disease, but have not yet experienced the onset of its symptoms.There are many fascinating independent features of interest in this film, but central to is the acting of Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon as the beleaguered parents. Their reactions and responses to this appalling family crisis are so believable, I felt literally bonded to them in their struggle. Their uphill battle against the prevailing conventional wisdom of medical authorities simply to make a better life for their child would have made for good drama whether or not they ever found anything even remotely resembling a cure for ALD and its related maladies. The fact that Augusto Odone did in a large measure blaze the trail for exactly that is exceptionally commendable. The way director George Miller shows Augusto Odone figuring out a solution to arrest his son's pain is both visually and intellectually stimulating all the way up to that 'Eureka!' moment. When I was growing up, I was fortunate enough to see films about inventors like Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and teachers like Annie Sullivan. I must say here that the idea that people can improve conditions in life should not be the strict province of non-fiction. We could still use more of this concept in all the other genres of storytelling and the cinema. I found the end of LORENZO'S OIL exceptionally exhilarating as it postulated a breakthrough that would end suffering for many before it even began. This concept alone is worth more than a dinner and a movie.It is worth a donation to THE MYELIN PROJECT.

One month ago, I became a father; and if I could define parenthood in one word, I would say 'concern'. How about love and responsibility? Believe me, when you're 'responsible' for the life of someone you 'love', it all leads up to anxiety, fear… indeed, concern.Ever since your child's born, the high-pitched cries coming from fevers, injections or stitches, make your heart bleed. And it goes on and on till the first cigarette or car accident. I'm not there yet, but in one month, I could relate more to my parents than I ever did in my whole life. And basically, "Lorenzo's Oil", directed by George Miller, chronicles the worst situation parents can ever face: an incurable disease.The parents are Augusto (Nick Nolte) and Michaela Odone (Susan Sarandon), the victim of this genetic cruelty is their boy Lorenzo, and the 'evil' has an ugly name: adrenoleukodystrophy (or ALD). It's caused by an overproduction of lipids that destroy myelin, the sheath that protects brains cells. In other words, it's a degenerative disease and Lorenzo's days are numbered. He starts as a healthy and lively child who grew up in Comoros Islands where his father was assigned, and shows progressive signs of mental troubles: tantrums, fallings, loss of hearing… But George Miller has a very straight-forward way to get us to the diagnosis after 10 or 15 minutes.The news fall like a death sentence and the doctor's tone prepares the parents for the worst. But their denial feels like the first of the five natural stages of grief that finally conclude with resignation, but how to resign when it's about something no one knows? Indeed, as laypeople, we're all inclined to respect whatever the doctor says, because he knows and we don't. So what to do when the doctors don't know the very abomination that strikes your child? The point is not to shaken the doctors' credibility but to confront the parents to two options: resign or fight.I said 'concern' is the defining word of parenthood, but by becoming purposeless in front of death; concern transcends its very meaning to make the miracle possible. In the film's pivotal moment, Augusto suggests to Michaela that they have to approach ALD as they did with Comoros: a new world to get immersed to, no matter how long it takes. Augusto and Michaela make their own researches in libraries and medical institutes, grabbing any piece of information that can help them to understand, for instance, why the diet ordered by the doctors didn't decrease the level of lipids, but made it worse.Meanwhile, Michaela reads stories to Lorenzo, talks to him, like a normal child, rejecting such advice as putting him in an institute or to 'think of herself'. But she can't enjoy life while his boy is trapped in that body and Augusto can't sleep without finding the answers. The film is an exhaustive and painful experience to watch, with scenes inter-cut through fade-out, as to suggest the inexorable passing of time. Time becomes an enemy, injecting all the stress in the parent's mind and alienating them for their family, and meeting the disapproval of their entourage, even the supports group and the medical corpse represented by Dr. Nikolais (Peter Ustinov).Nikolais is genuinely concerned by the case but warns them not to be carried away by hope because science requires discipline and time. But time is a luxury they can't afford and that's the core of the conflict although "Lorenzo's film" isn't a anti-scientific movie. George Miller, a medical doctor, didn't portray the doctors as a bunch of conservatives. In fact, the biggest clash occurs between Augusto and Muscatine (James Rebhorn) the support group organizer. Augusto loses his temper advocating his right to inform the other parents about a new treatment but even Muscatine makes a valid point about the misleading effect of hope, even when it's real.All the interactions feel real to a gut-wrenching level. The portrayal of ALD isn't sugarcoated either, it's an ugly, scary, disturbing, made of screams, epileptic outbursts and some close-ups are absolutely unnerving. Miller's directing is understandable; his angular shots emphasize the dizzying dive in the Odone's nightmare. Augusto screaming of despair on the stairs while contemplating the idea of death is one of the film's most haunting moments. But it makes the whole ending more satisfying since the researches finally pay-off, when two cooking oils reveal to be excellent remedy against the chain of fatty acids responsible of the disease.The conflict with doctors is not over but as a father who has dealt with doctors, I could relate to their obsession not to see over the limits of 'what is known'. At a crucial moment, the Odones blames the support group for acting as if the boys served the progress of science, while the opposite should prevail. The bias toward the Odones never seems gratuitous because it shows people as part of it, while the power should be theirs. "Lorenzo's Film" is difficult to watch but its lesson is an inspiration for all humanity, showing that the measure of true heroes is to go beyond their limitations. It sounds cliché, but sometimes, reality gets more extraordinary than fiction.Two well deserved nominations for Best Actress, Sarandon has never been so heart-breaking and Best Screenplay, whose accomplishment is to make medical explanation accessible while sticking to a documentary-like realism. But Nick Nolte and George Miller deserved nods for their intense work, Nolte convinced me as a gentle, strong-willed, Italian father who refuses to surrender to fatality.I close the review with these three smiling faces from the poster in my mind, sadly realizing realize that all these three people died in real life, but happy to see that their fight was not in vain, if only, because there's a treatment that saved many boys who were diagnosed early enough, and rightfully called "Lorenzo's Oil".

"Scientists have found the gene for shyness. They would have found it years ago, but it was hiding behind a couple of other genes." - Jonathan KatzSusan Sarandon and Nick Nolte act their hearts out in "Lorenzo's Oil", a drama about a couple whose son suffers from Adrenoleucodystrophy (ALD), a fatal disease that progressively destroys the brain. Directed by the always reliable George Miller, and based on a true story, the film watches as the couple's son worsens before our eyes, the boy eventually becoming paralysed, blind and unable to speak.With ALD having no cure, and the entire medical profession giving the kid no more than a few months to live, Nolte and Sarandon are thus faced with two choices: accept the fact that this rare genetic disease will soon kill their child, or focus all their efforts on finding a cure.Of course the couple refuse to accept the medical establishment's grim prognosis and instead go off in search of a cure. They spend countless hours in medical libraries, days talking to doctors, and weeks teaching themselves about the human body. Like detectives reverse engineering a crime scene, the couple parse the human body down to its segments and constituents. Afterall, biology's nefariously deterministic. Every cause has its effect. If you look hard enough, deep enough, think ten steps further, twenty, thirty even, then maybe, just maybe, you've got your miracle.Eventually, where the entire medical profession had failed, the two ordinary parents succeed. Using an oil which contains a specific chain of fatty acids, the couple produce a treatment which helps keep their son alive, though the film's happy ending masks a dark truth. Yes, in real life the couple's son would live a further 26 years, but his brain damage and paralysis would prove irreversible. Likewise, though the couple's oil has helped other families and sufferers of ALD over the decades, no cure for the disease exists at present.Still, forget about the film's Hollywood ending and melodramatic hurdles. Think instead of "Lorenzo's Oil" as a sadistic horror movie. Like "The Exorcist", we watch as a previously normal child/household is torn apart by a horrific evil. Unlike most horror movies, though, this "evil" resides not in the realm of the supernatural, but the biological. The genetic; your body wants you dead.And so the child degenerates into a mass of paralysed limbs, violent convulsions and tormented breaths. Nature - cold and indifferent - has revealed itself to be a horrific, ugly thing, every organism but one DNA strand away from unimaginable pain and torture. Life's a genetic lottery, and there's no worse horror than when biology strikes.So at its best, "Lorenzo's Oil" offers an epic battle between nature (our own biochemical makeup, DNA, RNA, a malevolent universe which knows only indifference) and science (human ingenuity, resolve, creativity, sheer will). Indeed, you might say the film reverses the message of Friedkin's reactionary "The Exorcist". Whilst "The Exorcist" asks us to shy away from science and toward religion as a "cure" for our supernatural demons, "Lorenzo's Oil" demands that mankind focus its Promethean efforts on ending the suffering imposed at birth by nature. That man direct brain, body and "spirit" toward conquering the monsters that pump through the veins. Aesthetically, George Miller delivers a melodrama akin to Nicholas Ray's "Bigger Than Life". Always a dynamic director, he shoots his tale with canted angles, stark compositions and bombastic camera work. It's "Mad Max" meets "ER" (Miller was himself a doctor), a tone which will strike most viewers as being a bit too heavy-handed. Look closely, though, and Miller's operatic style works perfectly if we take his film, not as a domestic drama, but a kind of 1950s horror movie in which glitched bio-code replaces rubber suited monsters. This is German Expressionism in suburbia, Nosferatu playing with X-ray machines.8.5/10 - Worth two viewings. Makes a good companion piece to Barak Goodman's "The Boy In The Bubble"", "Lightning Over Water", "Near Death", "Cries And Whispers", "Maborosi", "Ikiru" and "The Fire Within".

An inspirational film, great performances by Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte, both were worth of Academy Award nominations, Sarandon was and Nolte was unfortunately in a very tough crowd of actors that year and didn't make the cut. Still I think it's Nolte's best performance I have ever seen. The film deals with both parents dealing with their child's illness in very different ways but both loving their child equally. The supporting cast does a good job with their material and add to the emotion of the story at a few points. It was great to learn of this being a true story and the information given to the audience right before the credits. I would love to find out some kind of current day update on the situation of things as the film only cover several years afterwords.