Root Cause

Filmmaker Frazer Bailey's medical/dental agit-prop piece joins a recent upswell of healthcare/alternative-medicine dissenters railing against root-canal procedures as being both unnatural and responsible for a vast spectrum of disorders (from backaches to cancer). Root Cause starts in Morgan Spurlock fashion, with cheeky first-person narration from an Australian beach-bloke guy (actor Ben Purser) who is prescribed a root canal after getting punched out (this is that rare dental-hygiene documentary with a sex/nudity/violence quotient). Over the next 10 years, he suffers chronic fatigue, impotence, depression, and insomnia, and samples a comical assortment of New Age treatments, until something that seems much like dowsing pinpoints his root canal as the reason. A parade of physicians (many hailing from the tainted fringes of the holistic field) give reasons why having a dead "taxidermied" tooth in one's mouth, strictly for cosmetic reasons, is a breeding ground for bacteria. There are some compelling stories and statistics, followed by slightly more wacky assertions about individual teeth controlling "meridian” lines of force governing body functions (the suggestion is that having a root canal is simply asking for trouble elsewhere). And the film is naturally unsparing in showing the ickiness of the procedure. Much like the current crop of anti-vaccination screed documentaries, this one is not a necessary purchase. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)