The Reel Critic

Author: Josh Wessler

Movie: A Walk to Beautiful
Director: Amy Bucher '87

Early last week, Amy Bucher '87 stood at the front of Dana Auditorium and asked the audience if anyone had heard of obstetric fistula. The response was noncommittal, which Bucher seemed to accept as a challenge, one she and her production team had accepted years ago when they decided to make a film about it. The challenge was to create a film that allowed for people to understand without simply being told and to care without being indicted.

According to the film, obstetric fistula is a condition that affects two to three million women worldwide, predominantly in poorer and rural areas. In Ethiopia, where the film takes place, those suffering from the condition and seeking medical treatment must travel to a specialized hospital in Addis Ababa, the capital and major city. "A Walk to Beautiful" chronicles several women who travel from the rural to the urban in order to find care. The women, filmed in their home villages, are utter outcasts. For many, their husbands have left them for others, they are unable to find employment and they are often forced to live in isolation, apart from their families. Their affliction is ostensibly hygienic, although the ramifications are deep and unsettling - these women are incontinent, in most cases as a result of the failed delivery of a baby. The shame and seclusion, self-imposed and otherwise, render them unable to live as they did before. One woman, who like many others became a young bride, recalls when she was beautiful at age eight or nine, when she became a wife. Their inability to control their bladders leaves them feeling as ugly and disposable as trash, to themselves and to those who loved them.

The journey from the countryside to the city almost inevitably requires a long walk, as noted often by the film's protagonists. Many villages are situated several hours on foot from a main road, a situation that the hospital staff describes as impeding the delivery of medical care to more of the population. Dr. Catherine Hamlin, the hospital's co-founder and current director, described one woman who arrived after waiting six years at a bus stop in order to raise the $20 necessary for the trip. After arriving, the women are interviewed by a male doctor who then tells them he will perform a pelvic exam. For one woman in particular, and probably for many more, this is a moment of panic, connoting exposure and humiliation, but the doctor assumes an understanding that the intrusiveness is for her own good; it is one of the more uncomfortable scenes in the film. For the remainder of their stay, the women live in a hospital ward, undergoing surgery, physical therapy and group education sessions. Though the song of the hospital intones the benefits of holistic improvement, the patient's experience is wrought with anxiety and doubt about the success of the operation as well as the prospects of returning home.

Somehow, "A Walk to Beautiful" managed to escape the myopic gaze of the Academy this past winter - the strange part is that the film went on to win the most prestigious prize from the International Documentary Association for 2007. Under Bucher's direction, the film allows for its protagonists to preach, without raising itself to the pulpit. Many of the hospital physicians and professional staff believe they are dealing with a development issue - obstetric fistula is the result of underfed and overworked women who are often too small to deliver babies. To make the problem worse, there seems to be an epidemic of forced, child marriages. One attendant describes the patients as "modern-day lepers," while another remarks that psychotherapy is integrated into therapy in order to help the women understand the power and truth about medical treatment. The goal is to transform the hospital into a total institution, providing community when the patients were outcasts, offering love when all was taken away and perfecting an environment suitable for growth. The solution offered by the towering male doctors is quick and lasting, though one must wonder if social rejection can be fixed so easily.

Fortunately, the film is critical of itself in that it subtly reveals certain inconsistencies within the hospital and the contradictions of the mantra of progress and science. Similarly, the film tells several human stories of doubt, fear and anger. These two stories, one of the complexities and challenges of medicine and the other of personal struggle, need not be read independently or in opposition. In a telling scene near the end of the film, the physiotherapist meets with a woman who has undergone surgery and is frustrated with the results. Her attempts to strengthen her bladder are fruitless. The therapist smiles and advises her to keep working and waiting. "Don't be heartbroken," she muses, but the patient is just that. With the gulf between the women suddenly evident, the weakness of the patient's will or the failure of the hospital system is a judgment reserved for the viewer.