Review of Citizen Ruth (1996) by Sean G — 18 Aug 2007

Until the other week this was the only feature I hadn't seen yet by Alexander Payne, who's one of my favourite current directors. I was expecting it to be good but even so I was surprised and seriously impressed by the balance in this film - how even-handedly it satirises and also sees the good points in both sides of the abortion debate.

It's especially refreshing to see a film that doesn't simplistically portray pro-lifers as evil, retarded firebombers intent on taking our great enlightened modern world back to the dark ages (e.

G. the start of Dogma, which I did like overall). Citizen Ruth celebrates, in a somewhat bleak yet also oddly uplifting way, the power and validity of the individual in a world dominated by uselessly warring factions - a very positive thing for me.

This film's quite hard to find compared with Alexander Payne's others, but very much worth the effort. For those who know his other films, I'd personally put it behind Election and probably About Schmidt, but ahead of Sideways.