One of the bright spots of the recent Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, was Howard Goldberg's independent film, Eden.

In Eden, we are introduced to Helen, who has multiple sclerosis and wears a leg brace. The year is 1965. Helen is married to Bill, a teacher at a New England Prep School. She is a stay-at-home mom with two young children. Bill is a tough authoritarian figure who presses conformity to traditional roles.

Nineteen-sixty-five spells the dawn of a new age - for Helen and everyone else. One morning Helen tells Bill of her dream in which she flew. Nothing terribly remarkable there; we've all had flying dreams. Helen then begins to have out-of-body experiences,

The astral projections are contrasted to her daily experiences living with the uncertainties of m.s. Helen’s m.s. exists alongside her frustrations with her lived experience. Bill expects her to stay home with the children, he berates her for not keeping house properly, and he forbids her to seek a position as a teacher or tutor.

Helen's out-of-body experiences are liberating physically and spiritually. Helen checks into the hospital for "rest and tests” and goes into a coma for weeks while she is out of her body. Remember, this is 1965, and Helen has no cultural context for these spiritual experiences.

It is during this period that Helen's husband, Bill, comes to terms with his wife having m.s. and his own authoritarian stance against Helen and the world. In a poignant moment, Bill speaks to his comatose wife and tells her that he thought he needed to accept her body with m.s. He did that, he tells her, but he adds, "I forgot to accept you, who you are.”

This film is an interesting treatment of disability, body image, and spirit. In many films, the metaphor can get in the way of the message. I am thinking in particular of Jennifer Lynch's Boxing Helena in which an obsessed lover cuts off the arms and legs of his “object” of desire in order to control her. Or, think of Linda Wertmeuller's Swept Away, in which the gender struggles of a wealthy woman and the crew member of her yacht are supposed to represent class struggle. The metaphors are so powerful in themselves that the film viewer cannot really get beyond the metaphoric image and appreciate the message. Eden is a film where m.s. is used to help us explore mind, body, spirit, and who we are. The metaphor works.

(Gary Kiger, Utah State University, Logan, UT)

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