by Darla Baker
Review of the movie Hannah Free
6:04 pm in Human Rights by Darla Baker
Last night was our first Stone Soup Community of Dayton, Ohio outing. We attended the screening of Hannah Free a Ripe Fruit Films production.
The movie addresses a subject that is both very real and very frightening to the lesbian community living in a country where our right to marry and create a legal family status with our partner are so dangerously tenuous. Who among us hasn’t worried that an accident or a stroke might leave us permanently separated from the most important person in our lives? I am reminded of the heart-wrenching scene from If These Walls Could Talk 2 in which Edith’s partner of many years, Abby, dies of a stroke in the middle of the night as she waits in the waiting room through the night and into the morning. Her “friend” dies. She wasn’t allowed to see her. Not before she died and not after, simply because she was not “family”.
As our country debates health care reform, perhaps we should think also about these “family” policies. It is the one part of health care reform that is totally free. Shouldn’t we be allowed to see whomever we wish when we are sick or dying? Shouldn’t anyone not a health risk to themselves or the patient, be allowed to visit a sick or dying person? “Family” in these circumstances are the people who show up, when they are under no obligation to do so, to support, comfort, and be with the sick and dying. That, and that alone, should be the definition of “family” in such circumstances. People are so obsessed with defending outdated, hateful and narrow-minded rules about the definition of family, they are forgetting to simply be compassionate human beings.
Who cares what form love between two individuals takes. Whether I’m a friend or a “friend”, my presence in that hospital or nursing home room is important and healing. Too many people in hospital beds or nursing homes never get to see a friendly face. Is that the proper moral battle ground?
Kelli Strickland gives a fine performance as young Hannah. Although at times the romance seems to be a May/Fall one as Kelli appears much younger than Ann Hagemann who plays the younger Rachel. In discussing the film at dinner, we concluded that the film might have needed more than three stages of actors for Hannah and Rachel, but perhaps budget constraints prevented it.
Jacqui Jackson, who plays Greta also gives a fine performance. I would like to have seen her lover on screen as well, particularly in the final scene. Greta’s interaction with Les Hinderyckx, who plays a sterotypical elderly nursing home gentleman, was incredibly touching.
