Pbenjay's Blog

Once again I find myself in the odd position of NOT loving a movie that has many admirers.  Two nights ago we saw The Sessions featuring John Hawkes, Helen Hunt, William H. Macy and cameo appearance by Rhea Perlman.  It is the poignant story (true) of a young man afflicted with polio since childhood.  He spends most of his life in an iron lung with respites of a few hours on a gurney  with a portable respirator.  He can only move his head although he is not totally paralyzed, he cannot move any other part of his body because polio affects all his muscles. Although his life is limited, his mind is not.  Mark (John Hawkes) is a college graduate, a devout Catholic and a virgin.  He knows the odds of his life span and has decided he should experience sex before he dies.  Oddly enough he chooses the parish priest (William H. Macy) as his confidante and looks to him for guidance.  If that in itself isn’t a bit of a stretch (hey I’m Catholic, I know!), even with long wavy (à la California) hair and suntan, not for a minute did Macy appear to be a priest to me.  Sorry 😦

John Hawkes and Helen Hunt give outstanding performances; Hopefully, the movie isn’t too small to eliminate Hawkes from an Oscar nomination.  He can only use facial expressions and his voice to convey every emotion and yet he is as compelling in this role as he was in Martha Marcy May Marlene , as the sinister cult leader and the sensitive, complex merchant in Deadwood.  My friend, Nancy, summed up the excellence of Hunt’s performance by noting just how amazingly comfortable and at ease Helen is with her own body.  She was nakedly natural and naturally naked, skillfully playing the complex role of sex surrogate, wife, therapist and mother.

English: John Hawkes in 2009. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) 

The screenplay is based on the autobiographical writings of Mark O’Brian. And this is where and why I think the movie didn’t  ring entirely  true for me. I believe the story was probably significantly enhanced by Hollywood, or it wouldn’t have gotten made. I suspect most of the facts are accurate however  it is through the performances of highly-skilled, beautiful actors and deliberate casting that the facts have been interpreted.  I know I sound like a pessimist but quite frankly, I seriously doubt that Mark’s life was populated with aides and therapists the likes of Helen Hunt, Moon BloodGood and Annika Marks.  Additionally I feel that the odds are not likely to be in his favor that all three beautiful women fell in love with him.  If in fact, the real Mark O’Brian was that compelling then unfortunately the script did not allow us to glimpse that magnetic personality.  

Mark was a poet, an artist in his mind, trapped in a body that allowed him to express himself only through his words.  He suffered from grandiose romantic misapprehensions, reflected in his inappropriate  but possibly also naive behavior.  First he proposes marriage to his home health aide – what was he thinking??  Later on predictably he falls for his sex therapist. 

Fortunately the story has a happy but ultimately sad ending.  I may be a spoiler but I’m stopping here.