Two-time Oscar winner Hilary “Million Dollar Baby” Swank played the character of Kate who is suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis(ALS) which is probably best-known these days as the “Ice Bucket Challenge” disease or Lou Gehrig's Disease.
Lou Gehrig's disease disorder or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ( ah-my-uh-TRO-fik LA-tuh-rul skluh-RO-sis), or #ALS. The official name comes from these Greek words:
- "a" for without
- "myo" for muscle
- "trophic" for nourishment
- "lateral" for side (of the spinal cord)
- "sclerosis" for hardening or scarring
Lateral means that the disease affects the sides of the spinal cord, where the nerves that nourish the muscles are located.
Sclerosis means that the diseased part of the spinal cord develops hardened or scarred tissue in place of healthy nerves.
ALS is often called Lou Gehrig's disease after Lou Gehrig, a hall-of-fame baseball player for the New York Yankees who was diagnosed with ALS in the 1930s. People in England and Australia call ALS motor neurone disease (MND). The French refer to it as maladie de Charcot, after the French doctor Jean-Martin Charcot, who first wrote about ALS in 1869.
Lou Gehrig's disease damages motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Motor neurons are nerve cells that control muscle movement. Upper motor neurons send messages from the brain to the spinal cord, and lower motor neurons send messages from the spinal cord to the muscles. Motor neurons are an important part of the body's neuromuscular system.
The neuromuscular system enables our bodies to move and is made up of the brain, many nerves, and muscles. Things that we do every day — like breathing, walking, running, lifting stuff, and even reaching for a glass of water — are all controlled by the neuromuscular system.
ALS is often called Lou Gehrig's disease after Lou Gehrig, a hall-of-fame baseball player for the New York Yankees who was diagnosed with ALS in the 1930s. People in England and Australia call ALS motor neurone disease (MND). The French refer to it as maladie de Charcot, after the French doctor Jean-Martin Charcot, who first wrote about ALS in 1869.
Lou Gehrig's disease damages motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Motor neurons are nerve cells that control muscle movement. Upper motor neurons send messages from the brain to the spinal cord, and lower motor neurons send messages from the spinal cord to the muscles. Motor neurons are an important part of the body's neuromuscular system.
The neuromuscular system enables our bodies to move and is made up of the brain, many nerves, and muscles. Things that we do every day — like breathing, walking, running, lifting stuff, and even reaching for a glass of water — are all controlled by the neuromuscular system.
For me, the movie is tremendously touching - resonating emotions beyond just ALS. I know that a lot of Pinoys will not be able to emphatize 100% with ALS sufferers except maybe for a few. A lot of Filipino though can boost that they participated in the very famous “Ice Bucket Challenge”. Lol.
I know that kind of reaction is to be expected because a lot of people had utter disregard of what others feel. And that is a fact. You can find them posting statuses or pictures promoting themselves having a great heart or that they helped the poor, the sick and the needy. Some even participated in charitable campaigns all for show and lootbag. Ika nga, in bloggers terminology, hindi sila "nganga" even though they had to clean toilets or wash toys.
Anyone who has mourned the lost of their motor skills or experienced or had a life threatening disease would cry bucket of tears because this movie will make you remember of what you have been through in the past. Memories of those times when you yourself had experience how it is to be helpless because you cannot control your hands or when you can't even put on a smile because of the pain.
The movie start off showing Houston couple Kate (Swank) and Evan (Josh Duhamel) as they host a cocktail party in their impressive, antiseptic modernist home. All goes well until Kate, a former concert pianist, takes to the keys and finds her right hand shaking uncontrollably.
Fast forward to a year and a half later, Kate’s disease has advanced rapidly, necessitating around-the-clock care. I saw myself in Kate's when she was in the bathroom and her husband was gently giving her a bath. That is me, three years ago. But instead of a husband, it was my brother and an assistant who assist me in the bathroom. Unlike Kate, I am fully cloth. I am sharing this information with you because I want you to appreciate your life more. Yes, little one. You are so lucky, so please don't live your life judging other people or make them think they are a lesser person than you are. After all, you never experience how to live their lives. Don't make other people look bad nor made them be ostricized by others simply because you don't care. When you are not part of the solution then you are a part of the problem. When you see evil works and you just stares and watches on the sidelines then you are evil yourself.
After firing a very competent nurse because she made her feel like a patient, Kate tries going in the opposite direction, auditioning an unemployed college student with no relevant experience named Bec (Rossum).
Such as this plug for why she should become Kate’s helper-nurse.“I can’t cook anything. Not even Pop Tarts.”
Even though Kate’s detail-oriented husband (Josh Duhamel) disapproves, this is what Kate wants. Kate wanted to manage her life and body as she loses control over both. And even Bec’s giggling, no, I stand corrected, cruel laughter, after dropping her incapacitated charge into the toilet the first time she helps the wheelchair-bound Kate use the bathroom doesn’t change Kate’s mind.
Rossum who played the role of Bec is fiesty, self-involved and not the sort of young woman who gets all weepy over her employer’s death sentence. The hardest things to believe here is Kate’s decision to hire her and any growing affection between them. They’re quite different, as their attempts at girltalk make plain. Bec is rude, a hard-swearing, unfiltered sort and inept at many of the things Kate needs.
The renowned stage director turn “chick picture” director George C. Wolfe (“Nights in Rodanthe”) has a nice touch with several scenes. I wonder why they did not show Kate’s doctor. The faceless doctor is blunt, professional, distant and anonymous.
Duhamel is decent at playing the noble heel of a husband, and Rossum is best at playing the gorgeous girl who dresses down, drinks and embodies Kate’s philosophy of misplaced love.
“Why is it that we want the ones who see us instead of the ones who do?”But Bec keeps translating for Kate, whose inability to breathe is making her hard to understand. Loretta Devine (“For Colored Girls”) who played as Kate's fellow ALS sufferer is more vital and wholly believable in a couple of upbeat but sad, gasping scenes (Ernie Hudson plays her husband).
Nonetheless, the film does improve substantially as it goes on, with Bec settling down into a more believable character, and the screenplay’s more formulaic paces leaving room to raise some tough, honest questions about living with disease. Without denying Kate her moment of Terry McMillan-esque emancipation from her wayward husband, the pic gradually allows him to explain himself, accounting for the strain that terminal illness exerts on sufferers’ spouses.
Swank excels in subtly underplaying the pileup of indignities that Lou Gehrig’s disease inflicts on its victims, her voice growing incrementally less decipherable as her condition worsens. Though she has some moderately cliched scenes of cinematic suffering, it’s her look of resignation as she struggles to turn the pages of a magazine, or her quiet discomfort as strangers attempt to shake hands, that really convey the brutality of the disease.
The acting is fine all around, though the quality of the characters can vary wildly. Loretta Devine and Ernie Hudson are delightful as a couple of fellow patients, and Frances Fisher brings some interesting shadings to her brief role as Kate’s blue-blooded mother. Marcia Gay Harden, however, is pure icy malevolence as Bec’s disapproving mom, and Jason Ritter hits some unintentionally stalkerish notes as a supposedly nice guy vying for Bec’s affections.
Although this disease can strike anyone, it is extremely rare in kids. According to the ALS Association, most people who develop Lou Gehrig's disease are adults between 40 and 70. Only 2 out of every 100,000 people will get the disease each year. Because it is not contagious, you can't catch ALS from someone who has the disease. ALS is a terrible disease, worthy as a cause and as the subject of a movie.
Film Review: #You're Not You
Running time: 104 MIN.
Starring: Hilary Swank, Emmy Rossum, Josh Duhamel, Loretta Devine, Ernie Hudson, Marcia Gay Harden, Frances Fisher, Jason Ritter, Julian McMahon, Ali Larter.
Swank shows, in gestures and gasping, hoarsening voice, the progression of the illness from that first dropped glass to the moment Kate, her character, realizes that her career as a concert pianist is over.
That’s when she meets Bec (Emmy Rossum), a would-be songwriter, perpetual college student and hard-drinking caregiver prone to one-night stands and tactlessly blurting out whatever thought pops into her head.
Such as this plug for why she should become Kate’s helper-nurse.“I can’t cook anything. Not even Pop Tarts.”
Even though Kate’s detail-oriented husband (Josh Duhamel) disapproves, this is what Kate wants. Kate wanted to manage her life and body as she loses control over both. And even Bec’s giggling, no, I stand corrected, cruel laughter, after dropping her incapacitated charge into the toilet the first time she helps the wheelchair-bound Kate use the bathroom doesn’t change Kate’s mind.
The renowned stage director turn “chick picture” director George C. Wolfe (“Nights in Rodanthe”) has a nice touch with several scenes. I wonder why they did not show Kate’s doctor. The faceless doctor is blunt, professional, distant and anonymous.
Duhamel is decent at playing the noble heel of a husband, and Rossum is best at playing the gorgeous girl who dresses down, drinks and embodies Kate’s philosophy of misplaced love.
“Why is it that we want the ones who see us instead of the ones who do?”But Bec keeps translating for Kate, whose inability to breathe is making her hard to understand. Loretta Devine (“For Colored Girls”) who played as Kate's fellow ALS sufferer is more vital and wholly believable in a couple of upbeat but sad, gasping scenes (Ernie Hudson plays her husband).
Nonetheless, the film does improve substantially as it goes on, with Bec settling down into a more believable character, and the screenplay’s more formulaic paces leaving room to raise some tough, honest questions about living with disease. Without denying Kate her moment of Terry McMillan-esque emancipation from her wayward husband, the pic gradually allows him to explain himself, accounting for the strain that terminal illness exerts on sufferers’ spouses.
Swank excels in subtly underplaying the pileup of indignities that Lou Gehrig’s disease inflicts on its victims, her voice growing incrementally less decipherable as her condition worsens. Though she has some moderately cliched scenes of cinematic suffering, it’s her look of resignation as she struggles to turn the pages of a magazine, or her quiet discomfort as strangers attempt to shake hands, that really convey the brutality of the disease.
The acting is fine all around, though the quality of the characters can vary wildly. Loretta Devine and Ernie Hudson are delightful as a couple of fellow patients, and Frances Fisher brings some interesting shadings to her brief role as Kate’s blue-blooded mother. Marcia Gay Harden, however, is pure icy malevolence as Bec’s disapproving mom, and Jason Ritter hits some unintentionally stalkerish notes as a supposedly nice guy vying for Bec’s affections.
Although this disease can strike anyone, it is extremely rare in kids. According to the ALS Association, most people who develop Lou Gehrig's disease are adults between 40 and 70. Only 2 out of every 100,000 people will get the disease each year. Because it is not contagious, you can't catch ALS from someone who has the disease. ALS is a terrible disease, worthy as a cause and as the subject of a movie.
Running time: 104 MIN.
Starring: Hilary Swank, Emmy Rossum, Josh Duhamel, Loretta Devine, Ernie Hudson, Marcia Gay Harden, Frances Fisher, Jason Ritter, Julian McMahon, Ali Larter.
Showing in theaters nationwide on November 26, 2014.
Information about ALS was taken from Kidshealth.
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