Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien

What you see in this article is really who he was. A deep thinker, he's the reason I started writing at a young age. He never gave up. He passed three years after his film won an academy award. I'm not a big fan of the sessions but the actor nailed his body and movements.

I can't agree more with the comments made by an earlier viewer of this film. Mark O'Brien's life was lived to the fullest with more courage, guts and compassion than many of us "able bodied" persons. His witty observations serve in their own way as a trenchant critique of a society obsessed with physical beauty and athletic prowess. This is a man whose sexuality, dreams and demons forged a unique and unforgettable life. I came away from the film both humbled by my own pretensions yet exalted by Mark's refusal to give up. (He was an unbending opponent of assisted suicide.) Look for it at your public library. I challenge you to watch this film and not come away a changed person.

I just saw this incredible film by Jessica Yu and just have to say something about it. Actually, it's not really an achievement in filmmaking, the images and words used here really tell all there is to it. I simply can't describe it, you have to see it for yourself (if you're interested in life). Words just ... aren't enough to say what kind of man Mark O'Brien was. No, even that isn't saying enough. I just want to praise his parents for their incredible loving, his friends for respecting him as a human being and, of course Mark O'Brien himself, for, well, just being who he was. I really learned from these 35 minutes, more than from most people I have met and from most films I've seen, books I've read,... This man's thoughts about God, life, his poetry,... I reckon many people won't expect that from a man who can't live outside his machine, who actually hasn't got a body, at least not like most others. But his thoughts and courage reach far beyond those of most people who have the ability to move and do things Mark O'Brien can't. Or "couldn't", because he passed away after the making of this film. So this is for you Mark, and for all the others who have the courage to make life worth living for all of us, and who teach us things that matter. And thanks to Jessica and all who worked on this, for telling this story. Here's to all of you!

I can't express how phenomenal a film this is. Partly it is Jessica Yu's superb, understated direction. But a large part is Mark O'Brien himself, whose abiding intelligence and evocative poetry are electrifyingly cinematic, despite his being confined to an iron lung. I saw this film almost a year before it won the Oscar, and I have rarely been as happy as I was then. When I heard he died several years later, I was genuinely saddened. I watched it again today, when it was announced that Christopher Reeve had died. It reminds you how truly special some people are -- sometimes not because of what they do, but simply who they are. Which, when you think about it, may be the same thing. Don't miss it.

This is probably the second most difficult comment I have written on anything at the IMDb, but I saw this yesterday and, if I didn't comment on this, I likely would regret not doing so, so here goes:

Mark O'Brien was born roughly ten years before I was and contracted polio at age six, in 1955. Thus he was in an iron lung before I was even born. I have Cerebral Palsy, but even in that, I am comparatively fortunate. Mr. O'Brien struggled just to stay alive, to draw breath. Placed in context to that, my difficulties are a minor inconvenience. But, be that as it may, the reason that this struck me so profoundly is that, despite the major differences in our particular circumstances, at times in this documentary, his remarks were all too familiar to me. The disabled are viewed quite differently by a large segment of the "presently able-bodied" (that's as logical and meaningful a label as "differently abled", a phrase that is such a null that I hardly know where to begin in discussing it, so I won't) and most disabled individuals put up with things on a daily basis that would send the average person to the top of a building with a rifle and a scope inside of a week. On bad days, I think most people would probably breathe a sigh of relief if we, reminders of humanity's fragility, would just vanish. O'Brien not only thought that, he said and wrote it out loud.

One segment, toward the end, made me start crying, it hit so close to home. I won't discuss it here, but O'Brien talked about something in front of a camera that I doubt I could have even tap danced around. To anyone who has seen this, what O'Brien talked about here, it's not just an isolated instance, not just one voice in the wilderness. I'd wager that there are a lot of people out and about who'd say the same if pressed.

Disabled people are just that-PEOPLE who happen to be disabled. Treat us as such-people, more or less like you, just a bit different.

This should be in print and available. Well worth tracking down. Most highly recommended.