Chained for Life

All I can say is Jess Wexler is an absolute revelation. I was so lucky to catch this at NOLAFF and I was blown away. If you have no idea what the film is about please just just take my advice and give it a chance you will not regret it!

This must have been an immensely enjoyable film to make, once they'd worked out what piece of cinema or film they were actually trying to conjure - a little bit all over the place, to say the least, but as original a proposition as you've likely encountered for some time - with the main premise established on cultural prejudice and discrimination to difference. It uses those who lack the symmetry of societal expectations of beauty, by several standard deviations in this case, to reaffirm that differences are only skin deep but those physical attributes are shackled to the individuals psychology, as well as societal norms, whose end result is to imprison them without bars for most, if not all of their lives - akin to living in an open prison or asylum for a crime or crimes you didn't commit.

Don't know much about film production. However, this one was quite hard to differentiate between reality, documentary and real acting. Was about to skip it. Insanely brilliant!

Where MASK and ELEPHANT MAN were predictable, feel good movies, this one, like Todd Browning's FREAKS, really gets close to reality. The movie blurs the difference between documentary and fiction in unsettling ways.

'Actors and actresses are usually more beautiful than ordinary people....it is a supreme asset...because we love to look at them.' Pauline Kael's quote comes after Bonnie and Clyde (1967) because she is unhappy that the sexy violence is justifying it. Now it takes us further with this film we are obliged to look more at everyone. Chained for Life (1952) was an exploitation film about the real conjoined twins of Daisy and Violet Hilton. Aaron Schimberg takes his new one with the same title but instead of the 'Siamese Twins' he takes us to Adam Pearson who really has the genetic condition and we saw him in Under the Skin (2013) although he was also on many TV programmes. It is a rather splendid and difficult film within a film and relates to the previous film that we have to really look at others. We can consider listening to people is just as important as looking. We can commend Jess Weixler's performance as outstanding.