Rachel's Daughters: Searching for the Causes of Breast Cancer

From the makers of the Oscar-winning In the Shadow of the Stars, Allie Light and Irving Saraf's wide-ranging documentary follows a group of women battling breast cancer who decide to embark on research missions--interviewing scientists, researchers, and women-in-the-street--and periodically meet to review their findings. Analogous to Lorenzo's Oil--in which likewise committed individuals refused to simply sit back and let the "experts" chart the course of their illness--these daughters of Rachel (not the Biblical figure, but Rachel Carson, the author of the early environmentalist classic Silent Spring) search for the causes of breast cancer in myriad areas: electromagnetic waves, estrogen replacement therapy, mammogram radiation, toxins in the drinking water, pesticide residue, birth control pills, etc. At its best, the film presents moments of intensely personal narrative from people living on the borderline of life and death; here, we are once again reminded of the constant grace and terrible tragedy of the human condition. Balanced against such luminous moments, however, are the scattershot interviews which offer the infelicitous pairing of a breast cancer survivor who doesn't exactly know how to frame pertinent questions with scientists who don't always stop to re-phrase difficult concepts in understandable English. As a documentary, Rachel's Daughters is hardly impressive from a technical standpoint: It's overlong, repetitious, and badly edited in places. Yet, the film is also inspiring, a clarion call to action, and--at times--as moving as anything you're likely to see on film this year. Recommended, with some reservations. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)