Butler's Cinema Scene

Joseph and Leah  Stramodo

“FAR FROM THE TREE” My rating: B+

93 minutes | No MPAA rating

“Far from the Tree” is an effortlessly empathetic documentary about being different.

From a technical and presentational standpoint it’s pretty run of the mill.  But the subject matter of Rachel Dretzin’s heart-grabber is so compelling that once seen it’s doubtful anyone will quickly forget the supercharged emotion this film generates.

The inspiration is Andrew Solomon’s book of the same name, a massive examination of parents and children who are emphatically unalike.

Solomon was inspired by his own gayness (he appears in this film frequently clothed in an incendiary flamboyant wardrobe) and his struggle to gain acceptance from his disapproving parents.  But as he notes in a filmed interview, he wanted to expand the scope of his study to parents of all kinds of special/unusual children.

Between glimpses of Solomon’s life (he’s now married to another man and the father of two) Dretzin’s camera studied a variety of individuals.

There’s Jason Kingsley, born with Down Syndrome and something of a poster boy in his teens for his advanced intelligence. His mother relates the difficulties of having a Down Syndrome child and Jason’s brief triumph.

We see Jason now as a 40-something living in a house with two other Down Syndrome men. He holds down a job. But while his intellect remains sharp, his emotional life is stunted. He’s fallen in love with Elsa, the heroine of the animated “Frozen,” and while he knows she’s fictional he still wants desperately to travel to Norway in the hope of meeting her.

Andrew Solomon

Jack is autistic and has never spoken. But his parents relate — and old video footage demonstrates — how a therapist eased into Jack’s world to discover the thinking, feeling individual trapped inside. Now he communicates through a keyboard and electronically-generated voice.

The parents of Trevor have a heartbreaking tale.  As a teen Trevor slit the throat of a neighborhood child. He was unable to explain why he did it and now is an inmate in Louisiana’s notorious Angola State Prison. He regularly talks to his parents and younger siblings by telephone.

His parents, of course, agonize over what they might have done to create a monster; they take comfort in the fact that their other children, raised in identical fashion, turned out fine.  Trevor’s mother is both heroic and pathetic when she says that parental love is terrifyingly steady; she has been unable to stop caring for her son despite his crime.

“Far from the Tree” concludes with a bit of uplift.  First we meet Lioni, a young woman isolated by her dwarfism…at least until she attends a national convention of little people and begins to realize a new world of acceptance and possibility.

The  film then shifts effortlessly to two of her new acquaintances, Joseph and Leah  Stramodo.  He’s a professor of philosophy who early in the film describes the frequency with which “normal” people tell him that they’d rather kill themselves than live his life.

Meanwhile Leah exhibits a spectacularly outsized personality (her self confidence is off the charts) and prepares for the birth of their child.  They have lots of discussions about whether they’d prefer the baby to be “normal” or a dwarf.

“Far from the Tree” is a remarkably immersive experience that will leaving audiences gasping, laughing and tearing up. At a time when the evening news would have us believe civilization is circling the drain, this doc suggests that hope can flourish where we’d least expect it.

| Robert W. Butler