‘Gleason’ displays ALS’ devastating effect – ‘Eagle Huntress’ brings girl-power message

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Sonita Alidazeh (left), subject of the documentary film ‘Sonita’, and the film’s director Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami accept the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize for the German/Iranian/Swiss film during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony on Jan 30, in Park City, Utah.
Sonita Alidazeh (left), subject of the documentary film ‘Sonita’, and the film’s director Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami accept the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize for the German/Iranian/Swiss film during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony on Jan 30, in Park City, Utah.

LOS ANGELES, Feb 1, (RTRS):  The devastating effects of ALS are on full display in “Gleason,” an emotional powerhouse of a documentary charting former NFL star Steve Gleason’s battle with the debilitating disorder. With seemingly no restrictions from his subjects, director Clay Tweel delivers far more than just a typical inspirational living-with-disease doc: This is a portrait of a family forced to completely readjust their lives, never flinching from the accompanying fears and frustrations. Tweel masterfully assembles roughly four years of footage, much of it shot by Gleason himself, and the result is painfully raw at times but undeniably rewarding. His name value should provide a commercial stepping stone for a doc with strong potential to score across all platforms; Amazon purchased US rights at Sundance, and will partner with Open Road on theatrical release.

It would’ve been easy to play Gleason’s story for sentimental uplift meant to inspire others to live life to its fullest, or as a feature-length fundraising ad for the Team Gleason charity assisting those living with ALS. “Gleason” may accomplish both of those things anyway, but any such benefits come honestly and without manipulation by inviting viewers along on an intimate journey and holding nothing back.

Already a modern-day folk hero when he played for the New Orleans Saints, thanks to a pivotal blocked punt during the team’s first game following Hurricane Katrina, Gleason became a symbol of courage in the sports world when he was diagnosed with ALS at the age of 34. The diagnosis was almost immediately followed by the news that his wife, free-spirited artist Michel Varisco, was pregnant with their first child.

Vulnerable

Intent on leaving his offspring something to remember him by before his disease progressed too far (his life expectancy was as little as a few years), Gleason begins taping video journals full of advice, observations and lessons about life, as well as general updates on his own health. A documentary was already under discussion (filmmaker Sean Pamphilon was originally attached to the project), but entrusting anyone with footage so vulnerable and revealing couldn’t have been an easy call.

Especially as the years go on, the disease intensifies and Gleason’s physical condition deteriorates to the point when he can no longer hold his son or take care of his own basic functions (as demonstrated in a frank sequence involving a jolly nurse who arrives to give him an enema). The toll all this takes on Varisco, who is simultaneously trying to raise a toddler, couldn’t be clearer. Seeing two charismatic and adventurous souls reduced to nearly wordless squabbling speaks volumes about living with ALS.

There’s a richly comic streak to the film, too, as Gleason, Varisco and family friend and designated caregiver Blair Casey use humor to offset their situation, and the film makes a viewer feel like a part of what Varisco describes as their “badass unit” — which only makes the story’s more serious elements hit even harder.

Since the project has its origins in the birth of Gleason’s son, Rivers, it’s only appropriate that Tweel (who edited with Brian Palmer) uses the relationship between fathers and sons to shape the narrative. Gleason’s own father, Mike, admits that his son grew up in a “pretty dysfunctional marriage” and his own coping journey — from visiting a faith healer to revealing his greatest challenge is accepting his son might die — is among the film’s most moving threads.

A gender barrier upheld for hundreds of years falls before the prowess of a 13-year-old girl in the US-produced documentary “The Eagle Huntress.” Otto Bell’s first feature traces its heroine’s quest to become Mongolia’s first female practitioner of the titular skill, in which a wild eagle is trained to hunt game in tandem with its human keeper. A pervasive girl-power message underlined by the “You can do anything” refrain of Sia’s closing pop theme song, this entertaining slice of real-life inspirational adventure should appeal to family audiences not grossed out by brief animal butchery and a fox’s climactic fate. Nonfiction-cinema purists may be less enthralled with content that often feels somewhat staged, and highly manipulated in the editing room.

Cheerful, seemingly fearless Aisholpan Nurgaiv has been fascinated by her father and grandfather’s practice of this traditional hunting method from an early age. They’ve encouraged her interest, even though she spends weekdays at a dormitory away from the nomadic family’s yurt, due to the sparse scattering of available schools in their Altai Mountains region. Even there, she’s a tomboy who excels at athletics as well as academics.

Capture

One day her father allows her to capture a golden eagle chick (its considerable size already belying that term) from a cliffside nest. Girl and bird (the latter seems surprisingly agreeable) begin their mutual training, soon competing against some 70 much more experienced men in an annual competition where Nurgaiv is not only the youngest contestant, but also the first-ever female one. Her success there is applauded by most, but grumbled over by a few who still insist a woman’s place is strictly in the home — and that she’s still no true eagle hunter until she’s mastered the more dangerous, arduous and practical task of wintertime hunting. Naturally, her maiden effort at just that comprises the pic’s last act.

It also occasions one genuinely scary if brief sequence, when Nurgaiv and her father have to force their horses through treacherous waist-high snow high in the frozen steppes. Otherwise, there’s not a lot of suspense or conflict to “The Eagle Huntress,” since our heroine seems to easily ace every challenge put before her; the psychological and physical obstacles here seem more constructs of editing (and a mostly conventional, Western orchestral score) than organic observation. The elaborate camerawork (encompassing crane and drone shots) and general high polish suggest that, if not outright manufactured in the tradition of “Nanook of the North,” much of the pic’s drama has been highly shaped by the filmmakers to fit a narrative and thematic agenda.

This is not as bothersome as it might be in a different context: “The Eagle Huntress” clearly aims from the start to spoon-feed viewers of all ages an elemental tale of empowerment. Like Disney’s “True-Life Adventures” of yore, it educates while deploying some likely sleight-of-hand, and doesn’t really invite the kind of methodological scrutiny a more verite-style documentary would. The slick package benefits, of course, from the stark and imposing landscapes of Western Mongolia.

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