Steve Susoyev

Such important history! Gay rights did not begin at the Stonewall Inn in 1969. In Germany, almost a century earlier, brave men and women were documenting their experience. Much of their published work was thrown onto bonfires, which reminds us that we can't take any of today's freedoms for granted.

Handler holds a key to understanding Oliver Sacks. Sacks was enormously capable as a physician, writer, and speaker. But he was painfully shy, had a terrible time making decisions about the most mundane matters, and struck many people as a rather odd character. Among other things, Sacks appears to have carried far into late middle age the pain of his mother’s telling him, upon learning of his same-sex attraction, that he was an abomination and that she wished he had never been born. Handler in this film describes Oliver requiring 15 minutes to fasten his seat belt in an automobile. An image emerges of a man fascinated by other’s oddities in part because he felt so odd himself. Rather than hide from others, as many socially awkward people do, Oliver Sacks continued to engage, and along the way he connected with many people whose feelings of freakishness he empathized with. At the end of the film, Lowell Handler says, “Oliver’s legacy is showing us things about ourselves that we didn’t know and that we can now not only accept but embrace.” Rarely has a seven-minute film made this jaded critic weep, but that did the trick.