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5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A decidely rhetorical HBO movie, but unlikely to persuade an, 26 Jul 2005
"If These Walls Could Talk" is one of the most didactic films you are likely to see, but given that there is no issue in contemporary America that is more polarizing than that of abortion it could well be that it is one of the least persuasive films you will see as well. Those who are pro-choice will see it as compelling, while those who are pro-life will see it as offensive, and those who have not made up their minds are too young to watch anything that originally aired on HBO. That is especially true of this film, which has a pair of scenes that will upset you regardless of gender or ideology.The conceit of "If These Walls Could Talk" is that three women, living in three different times in the past half-century but in the same house, find themselves pregnant. Each faces a different situation, both personally and in terms of the legal and social climate regarding abortion. In 1952, Claire Donnelly (Demi Moore) is a young nurse whose husband had been killed in Korea. She has a moment of weakness and when she discovers she is pregnant she desperately tries to find someone who can perform an illegal abortion. In 1974, Barbara Barrows (Sissy Spacek) is a mother of four older children who has started work on a college degree when she finds herself pregnant. This baby means no early retirement for her husband and that their oldest daughter can forget about going to the college of her choice, so Barbara considers a legal abortion. In 1996, Christine Cullen (Anne Heche) learns she is pregnant by her married college professor. Christine is considering an abortion and discovers the local clinic is besieged by anti-abortion protesters, with volunteers escorting women inside past the gauntlet. What I find interesting about "If These Walls Could Talk" is the way that the writers have dressed up their rhetoric. The death of each person in this movie, whether they are born or unborn, is tragic because death is inherently tragic, and there is certainly an extent to which you can read things both ways in this 1996 movie. After all, the death of a woman because of a "back alley" abortion can be seen as an argument for making abortion legal so that it does not happen, but it also serves as evidence for the idea that women should not have abortions in the first place. Yet in the total context of the movie the preferred reading for such a things seems clear. Within that context the decision not to have an abortion is not just a pro-life decision, but a pro-choice one as well (to wit, she chooses life). Plus, we see a world where the people who carry guns and placards are fanatics in the crazy sense of the word instead of the deeply devote meaning. There are two sides to the issue, and in each vignette those two sides are represented, and the common denominator is that the side that is most judgmental is the side that loses in each instance. It is just that from a political perspective, one side of the dispute is inherently more judgmental than the other.
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