From: leeper@mtgzy.att.com (Mark R. Leeper)
Subject: REVIEW: LORENZO'S OIL
Reply-To: leeper@mtgzy.att.com
Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 20:01:17 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.movies
Summary: r.a.m.r. #01707
Keywords: author=Leeper

                               LORENZO'S OIL
                      A film review by Mark R. Leeper
			Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper

          Capsule review:  How did two parents with no medical
     background find a cure for the previously terminal disease
     that afflicted their son?  You actually will understand, step
     by step in this true story part intellectual puzzle, part
     political statement about the medical community, part story
     of a family medical tragedy.  We need more films like this.
     Rating: +3 (-4 to +4).

     A friend heard I was going to see LORENZO'S OIL and said we should be
sure to take handkerchiefs.  He had seen one LORENZO'S OIL.  My wife saw the
film as a political tract against the medical establishment.  She saw a
different LORENZO'S OIL.  The film I saw was neither of those two movies.  I
saw a film that was the logical successor to THE STORY OF LOUIS PASTEUR and
particularly DR. EHRLICH'S MAGIC BULLET.  It is the story of people who
start with a scientific puzzle that is also a tragic problem.  And step by
step, with the tragedy eating at them, they solve the problem.  And though
it is about a complex medical problem, the solution process is always
comprehensible, so much so that at one point I found myself whispering to my
wife the solution to a piece of the puzzle that the characters had not yet
figured out.  Here I am learning about a disease I'd never heard of when I
saw down and I wanted to shout a medical hypothesis at the screen.  (I was
right, too, except what I called a "constructor" they called an "enzyme.")
Anyway, that is the film I saw and I had a great time!

     This is a true story as enthralling as any from Paul de Kruif's MICROBE
HUNTERS or Berton Roueche's accounts of medical detective work.  Augusto
Odone (played by Nick Nolte) and his wife Michaela (played by Susan
Sarandon) are perplexed when their five-year-old son Lorenzo (played by Zack
O'Malley Greenburg) starts throwing fits of anger and losing his
coordination.  Eventually the boy is diagnosed as having an invariably fatal
disease, adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD).  Because the disease is so rare, the
medical community had funding for only limited research.  Less effort seemed
to be expended in research than in helping parents cope with the medical
crisis.  So Augusto and Michaela, neither with a medical background, set out
to do their own research and, remarkably, found their own cure.  (Not really
a unique story, however.  When the nuclear physicist Leo Szilard developed a
terminal case of bladder cancer, he turned his attention from physics to
medicine and discovered his own cure.  This was a case of "physicist, heal
thyself."  Of course, Odone was not even a scientist.  He was a banker.)

     Susan Sarandon does a very good job of conveying the anxiety of a
mother trying desperately to save her child and coping with a senseless
guilt because genetically ALD is passed by the mother.  Nick Nolte has
problems with the Italian accent, but otherwise is quite good.  Peter
Ustinov is, as always, a pleasure to watch, in a role not quite fair to the
medical community.  George Miller, best know for the "Mad Max" films,
directed and co-wrote the screenplay.  As a physician himself, he can
explain the medical aspects in nice, clear, simple terms.  His direction is,
however, a bit heavy on religious imagery and in gratuitous overhead shots.

     This is a film written for an intelligent audience, and intelligent
audiences should find it very rewarding.  My rating is +3 on the -4 to +4
scale.

					Mark R. Leeper
					att!mtgzfs3!leeper
					leeper@mtgzfs3.att.com
					Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews