A Day In The Life

I am not much of a movie goer. I prefer to watch in the comfort of my home, perhaps a video that I can pause when I want if I want to take a break. The cost of movies can be prohibitive too- close to $20 in some theatres. This summer has proven different for me- I have seen 3 movies in the past week! I am not interested in Sci-Fi, or animations, I have always preferred “real life” stories and documentaries. The 3 movies I have seen fall into that category.

The first one I saw was Three Identical Strangers. In 1980 New York, three young men who were all adopted meet each other and find out they’re triplets who were separated at birth and adopted by separate families, unaware that each child had brothers. The separations were done as part of a scientific “nature versus nurture” twin study to track the development of genetically identical siblings raised in differing circumstances. The documentary reveals how the brothers discovered one another at age 19 and thereafter sought to understand the circumstances of their adoptions. This movie was heartbreaking and disturbing. The adoption agency located in NYC, Louise Wise Services, allowed a secret study conducted by the Austrian-born psychoanalyst Peter Neubauer, who ran the Child Development Center. As part of Neubauer’s research, the triplets, along with as many as a dozen more sets of identical siblings, were surreptitiously split up and placed with families of different socioeconomic backgrounds, then raised separately so that Neubauer’s team could study the effects of nature and nurture. No one told the adoptive parents their children had identical siblings.

Researchers over the following years were regularly sent to the adopted children’s homes to test the children, then reported back to the psychoanalyst. They never revealed to parents the true purpose of their visit or that their child’s identical sibling was often living just a few miles away. Hard to believe. The movie was riveting, but I left the theatre saddened at the fate of the three brothers and the troubles they had throughout life. Definitely worth seeing and I would like to think we have evolved since the 1960’s and would never let this kind of study occur again.

The next movie was RBG, the story of the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I had no idea before seeing this film just how instrumental she was in changing laws for women’s rights in the early 1970’s. A female pilot in the air force was denied paid housing for she and her husband, even though the male pilots and wives all had paid housing. RBG took the case and won. The movie went on to tell of many other cases she took and won, in some cases changing the laws that violated women’s rights. What a fascinating woman, so bright and fearless. They say she was the civil rights pioneer for women in the 70’s.

The last movie I saw was about a group of Hassidic women who wanted to be part of an Orthodox Jewish Volunteer Ambulance Corps in Brooklyn, Hatzolah(which means rescue, or relief in Hebrew) but were turned away because they were women. The premise was that women in the Hassidic community would be more comfortable with an EMT who is female showing up if they are giving birth, or in an emergency at home,  then  a group of men. So they decided to start their own all women’s ambulance corps. Rachel Freier who organized the group said, “If you can’t join them, beat them.” The movie follows the push back these women got from the community- a community they are all part of. Rachel Freier has her own backstory- she is the first Hasidic Jewish woman to be elected as a civil court judge in New York State, and the first Hasidic woman to hold public office in United States history. Although she ran for the Civil Court, after her election she was assigned to serve on the Criminal Court in the Kings County, Brooklyn. She came to speak in my town last year, and I went to hear her. She is uncompromising in upholding her religious values though she is part of the secular world in court. She went to law school when she was 30, and it took her 6 years to finish while she was raising her 6 children.

I found the movie quite moving- this group of women never giving up when they seemed to be fighting an uphill battle, and then finally that moment when they get their first call. It was inspiring and uplifting.