New pro-life short film: “To Be Born”
I usually wince when receiving links to pro-life songs or videos, because they’re often not so good.
But here’s a new pro-life short film (11-1/2 minutes long without credits) that’s very good: To Be Born.
My ranking (out of 4 stars):
Production (HD!)/editing: 4 stars
Music: 4 stars
Acting: 4 stars
Storyline: 3 stars
Film’s background:
The film is based off a story called “A Letter from an Aborted Child,” which had been used for nearly 10 years by Father Stephen Lesniewski for use to show women in a time of indecision. He estimates that over 500 babies have been saved because of his efforts in utilizing the aforementioned piece. Upon its great success, Fr. Stephen decided to have a film produced with the hope that the overall message would reach an even larger audience.
I agree this is a good film to show abortion vulnerable mothers, and it’s short enough that they should have no trouble sitting through it. It also contains a short message of hope to post-abortive mothers.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdkWqHTgdpQ&sns=em[/youtube]
(My basic quibble on the storyline is mostly on a technicality, probably only because I’m a nurse. Others may not notice. But the little girl describes a dilation and evacuation abortion, which all the blood in the operating room backs up, while the mom appears to have aborted as soon as she started showing symptoms and confirmed she was pregnant, meaning she would have undergone a dilation and curettage abortion, which is not so gruesome. Accuracy and consistency are important. Abortion is bad. There’s no need to give the other side cause to say we’re embellishing. Otherwise, the story was very good.)
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
I think there was at least an attempt to remedy your problem with the timeline by having the girl ask sadly over the phone (paraphrase), “can’t you do anything earlier?”
KG – Maybe. I took that to mean she just wanted to get it over with one she’d made up her mind. But maybe.
I have to agree with K Gilbert, Jill. Sounds like they can’t get her in for some time with that statement.
Not to belabor the point, but she wrote down, “Clinic 6:00 p.m.,” meaning to me that night.
My critique in no particular order:
excellent acting
The nightmare scene was, IMO, a bit over the top, too prolonged. I understand what it’s trying to convey, just felt it was playing into the prochoice arguments that prolifers exaggerate. Not that I’m trying to placate prochoicers, mind you. I wonder if the same message could have been conveyed without so much frenzy.
Great choice of music
script: realistic, believable
final scenes could have been more succinct. Lots of slow motions that made me think, “Ok, hurry up already.”
I’m not a nurse, so I can’t speak to the medical aspect. As a music theatre major, there was plenty to enjoy, and some to nitpick.
One and a half thumbs up.
Hi Jill, thank you very much for posting this. My name is Rob Kaczmark, I am the director of “To Be Born.” I loved your review and thank you for posting it. I would like to give my two cents on a very great point you brought up about it’s “technical” issue. When we were approached to work on this film, Fr. Stephen (EP) had the “letter” part of it already in written (and was locked in to that), in which the child describes a d&e abortion. Our job was to create a story before and after; i.e. who is the girl, why is she getting an abortion, where is the father, etc. We went back and forth trying to write something that would “technically” make sense. However, nothing was really clicking since she would have had to been a lot farther along in the pregnancy in the film and well a long story short we made an executive decision to keep it as is. We thought that since it was a dream sequence it gave us some creative freedom to work with. In the end you are still correct, and I do wish it could have been free from all technical errors, but it is what we thought worked best overall. I hope this gives you some insight in the reasoning behind it. Again I want to thank you very much for your support and all you do for the Pro-Life cause.