FILM  review: Director creates tear-jerking documentary

By Kristen Wooley
Daily Forty Niner

Bring a box of tissue folks because "My Flesh and Blood," is probably the most devastating miracle of a documentary that we have seen in a long time. Susan Tom, the saintly mother of 11 children who all have unique disabilities, from severe burns, mental retardation to missing limbs, allowed director Jonathan Karsh into her home for one year, to document the family's struggles.

The feature-length documentary about the struggle of one single woman raising these fallen angels is hard to watch, especially with the added fear that her troubled 15-year-old son might harm or even kill one of his siblings.

When some of the children talk on camera, their individual stories absorb the lens, making you love them. The editing of the film was done brilliantly, capturing the most intimate of moments: the frequent hospital visits for several of the children, the birthday parties and the school plays. Every scene had a thread that connected it to the next.

Every scene of the film had its significant and poignant place as if the film were made by a higher power. The little bit of narration there was in the documentary came from Tom herself.

"I knew that I had a story here that could be told without voice over narration, with little music, with none of the devices used in mainstream television," Karsh, the director said. "Here I could create a powerful portrait of a family simply by being a fly on the wall."

That was precisely what he did in "My Flesh and Blood." The film won both the Documentary Audience Award and the Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival.

But the beauty and intensity of the film lies in its vulnerable subject, the dysfunction in the Tom family. With all the "real TV" series on television these days claiming to be based on reality, this documentary is the real thing. It is love, loss, and the amazing heart of one mother who saw past her children's disabilities to love them unconditionally.

This is a must see film that tugs at the heart, allowing you to see what happens when love, death and hope combine to both scar and enlighten a family.

In one scene of the film Karsh asks Faith, one of the children who is marred with by a disfiguring burn sprawled across her face, "Why is your name Faith?" Faith answers him with an endearing giggle: "Because my mom says everybody's gots to have a little faith."