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- this film worth seeing is that it touches on tough cancer subjects as few movies do: women’s feelings of physical inadequacy after disfiguring surgery, issues of sexuality and potential turning off of partners, a sense of guilt, or inadequacy in motherhood.
- this film worth seeing is that it touches on tough cancer subjects as few movies do: women’s feelings of physical inadequacy after disfiguring surgery, issues of sexuality and potential turning off of partners, a sense of guilt, or inadequacy in motherhood.
The first time I watched Decoding Annie Parker (DAP) I sat in a near-empty theater. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that a film about two exceptional women, breast cancer and science wouldn’t draw crowds on a sunny day. The movie, directed by Steven Bernstein, drew middling reviews after a limited release last spring. In light of last week’s news about one of its characters, Dr. Mary-Claire King, and findings on the BRCA-1 gene, which she discovered, I saw it again.
Decoding Annie Parker tells a remarkable story. Never mind the draggy music and lessons of perseverance. For anyone affected by cancer – with or without a BRCA mutation – this movie offers a rare window into the world of cancer treatment and being a female patient in the 1970s and 1980s. On close inspection, you might realize that despite so much progress in medical oncology, some aspects of the patient’s experience remain the same.
What makes this film worth seeing is that it touches on tough cancer subjects as few movies do: women’s feelings of physical inadequacy after disfiguring surgery, issues of sexuality and potential turning off of partners, a sense of guilt, or inadequacy in motherhood. Each of these difficult, real problems emerge in the story of Annie’s life.
It’s not a pretty picture, for sure. Three funerals fill early scenes. Most of the doctors play nightmare roles; they’re patronizing, falsely reassuring, and dismissive of Annie’s questions.
The young protagonist, warmly portrayed by Samantha Morton, loses her mother and then her sister to breast cancer. After she finds a lump, Annie has a mastectomy and then chemotherapy. She cries, throws up and goes bald. Her young son can’t help but observe his mother’s physical sickness and sadness. Nonetheless, Annie’s upbeat personality is credible. She loses friends and love, forgives, and embraces. She keeps her faith in science. In a manner reminiscent of the AIDS patient who founded the Dallas Buyers Club (a few years later, also in film loosely based on a true story), Annie assertively seeks out information about her disease.
In a role that betrays the film’s modern take, actress Rashida Jones first appears in a doctor’s office. She’s a sharp nurse who left the oncology wards, possibly burnt out. In short time she warms up and charms, providing Annie with books and connecting her with a younger, more open-minded physician. Their friendship and collaboration, unusual back then, lead Annie to the breast cancer gene-hunter, Dr. King.
Helen Hunt depicts the geneticist, Mary-Claire King. She’s steadfast, calm, and set in her mission to find the genetic roots of breast cancer. It wasn’t just that computers were slow in the early 1980s. Even if a researcher had all the money in the world then, it would take years to sequence one individual’s genome. Finding patterns of variants in DNA among families of people with breast cancer, most of whom lacked the BRCA mutation, was a daunting task. In her office King keeps an analog clock marked at 12 minute intervals. “That’s how often a woman will die of breast cancer in this country,” she explains to visitors. Most doctors and other scientists deny her (then) theory.
There’s a lot to absorb. Aaron Paul, best known for his role as Jesse in Breaking Bad, could be subtler as a wannabe musician and father to Annie’s child. But in a few scenes when they’re alone, when they’re singing (early on) or struggling to hold onto their marriage (after cancer) he’s straight on: “I can’t touch you,” he tells her. Twice.
In the last minutes − worth revisiting, the filmmaker cuts back to DAP’s first segment and extends it by a bit. Helen Hunt, playing the scientist, turns around. Annie has caught King's attention for a brief moment after a lecture. They – researcher and subject – connect awkwardly. King needs to rush off. But then something happens. The geneticist offers Annie a handful of crucial words. The lasting point is that Annie's story matters, and that a woman with a high school education, determined to find answers, could make a difference in the BRCA discovery.
I’d call the ending upbeat. Watch it if you can.
