It Could Be Any One of Us Review
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The beginning time I watched the documentary Any 1 of The states was near iv months before my fiancé, Andrew Bernstein, was hit by a van and very virtually killed while riding his bicycle.
At the time, I was working on a feature story for Bicycling about professional mount biker Paul Basagoitia, who had sustained a spinal-cord injury in 2015 at Crimson Balderdash Rampage, the sport's most farthermost contest. At the age of 29, Paul was paralyzed below the waist, and doctors gave him a five pct take chances of walking again. Three and a half years later, I'd seen on his Instagram that he was riding an e-mount bike. When we started talking in February, Paul told me he was releasing a film with Cherry-red Bull nearly his journey. The documentary, called Any One of Us, would premiere in March at the SXSW Film Festival. In February, Andrew and I watched a screener together i Friday night on the burrow, my notebook in my lap, our cat curled up in his. Past the end of the film, I was crying, rocked not only by Paul'due south story but that of the 17 other people in the film who share their honest perspective on what it is similar to alive with paralysis. A few weeks after that, I went to visit Paul in Reno, Nevada. I filed a draft of my piece in April. I hoped his story would inspire people. I hoped it would remind them to exist grateful for what they have, to appreciate how instantaneously information technology can all become away.
In July, someone driving a cargo van hit Andrew while he was riding his bike domicile on a land road outside Boulder, Colorado. The commuter fled the scene, leaving Andrew in a ditch with over 30 cleaved bones (including every rib), collapsed lungs, life-threatening internal haemorrhage from a shattered pelvis, and—though we wouldn't know at first—a spinal-cord injury (SCI). It would paralyze his left leg and disrupt his bowel and bladder functions. In September, subsequently two months of intensive and acute hospitalization, Andrew ended up at Craig Hospital, the same nationally renowned SCI rehab facility in Denver that had treated Paul. We would not come up home until October. Whatsoever I of Us would debut on HBO two weeks later on, on October 29.
The strangeness of the parallel is undeniable. At first I felt sick thinking this could be karmic—that by making Paul revisit the about traumatic moments of his life, by capitalizing (even with good intentions) on his ordeal, I had brought this upon us. A good friend of mine had a more optimistic take—that meeting Paul had prepared united states. The most probable reality is neither: This was simply a coincidence. This could happen to you or me.
Every bit the film'due south title belies, that'due south one of its main messages: a spinal-string injury could happen to anyone. The narrative of Any I of Us follows the fallout of Paul's injury over ii years. The first half was actually filmed by Paul himself, who has some videography background and had the remarkable prescience to turn the camera on himself, almost from day one. Just first-time director Fernando Villena uses a unique filmmaking technique to powerful outcome: introducing what Villena calls a "chorus" of 17 other people who share their experiences with SCI throughout the documentary. At the moment of Paul's injury, which was recorded non only by Rampage's live broadcast but too on Paul's own GoPro, members of the chorus chime in with their own stories of the incidents that left them in wheelchairs: Caught by a wave while surfing. Botched epidural. BMX crash. Auto accident. Knocked over while playing basketball game.
Villena and Basagoitia wanted the motion-picture show to be bigger than the story of one professional athlete. The National Spinal Cord and Injury Statistical Center estimates that 17,700 people in the U.S. suffer new spinal-string injuries every yr and 288,000 people live with an SCI. The inclusion of the chorus creates the effect of describing a collective SCI experience. The wheelchair-jump individuals speak with clarity and courage almost various aspects of the injury—from what happened to their sex activity lives, to the feeling of being "in the way" or an inconvenience to others, to their defiance at the thought that their value as a human existence has somehow inverse just because they're in a wheelchair. "I hated my fiancée seeing me," says Olympic BMX racer Sam Willoughby.
"I wanted to die. I didn't see how I could continue living similar that. Or like this," says Steph Aiello, who was injured in a car blow.
Basagoitia himself reveals, "Before this injury, I always said I would probably take my life if I was e'er paralyzed." It's a sentiment that, fifty-fifty watching the film the get-go time, hit home. Particularly for active people, the thought of waking up paralyzed is, to borrow Paul's word, a nightmare. Paul had been one of the best professional person slopestyle and freeride mountain bikers in the world. At age 17, he entered the inaugural edition of Crankworx, now the world's premier slopestyle competition, on a lark, riding a borrowed bike. Against the best pros in the globe, he won. The next twelvemonth, he won again. Scenes from his recovery, every bit he relearns how to do basic things like transfer into a car from his wheelchair and walk haltingly on parallel bars, are juxtaposed with scenes from his career: Paul spinning in the air, doing a 360; Paul spraying himself with champagne on the podium; Paul shirtless, hanging jubilantly out of the driver'south seat of a trophy truck he won in Germany (he'd sell it the side by side day: "There was no way I was getting that thing dorsum to the U.S.," he laughed, when he told me the story in Reno).
In the hospital, I idea of Paul as I watched my fiancé struggle with stairs for the first fourth dimension after his injury, leaning on a handrail and laboriously placing his left leg, stiff and heavy in its metal brace, on each pace. Andrew and I are both cyclists. We rode our bikes five to seven days a week. An elite-level rails and road racer, Andrew had always been one of the strongest guys on the grouping ride. When I was tired, I would sit in the generous draft forged by his half dozen-foot-3 frame, and he would pull me home. In the early days in the ICU, when nosotros knew well-nigh his injury but he was too febrile and doped up on hurting medications to still be told, he had all the same somehow known. One night, after his blood brother, Eric, and I left the hospital, he texted united states, "Remember, I used to be a good wheel racer."
I wanted to scream.
In Reno, Paul's and then girlfriend and now fiancée, Nichole Munk, had told me that she did not cry throughout the three months that Paul was in hospitals. If that sounds unbelievable to you, information technology won't be once y'all watch the film, throughout which it becomes apparent that Nichole is an extraordinary human and one uncannily equipped to support Paul through his ordeal. In that location's a moment in particular in Whatsoever One of Us that Paul and Nichole told me got a lot of surprised reactions from people during screenings: After a visit from his father in the hospital, Paul gets emotional and starts choking upwards as he talks about it. Instead of cooing over him, Nichole tells him to "toughen up."
It's a jarring interaction and one that flies in the face of our preconceptions of how women are supposed to be caretakers: soft and endlessly nurturing. And all the same, a few minutes later, Nichole—who started dating Paul while she was cheerleading for the University of Nevada, Reno—is dancing in his wheelchair, laughing, an infectious smile on her face. And he's laughing, likewise. "I take to be positive and so he can be happy," she says in a voice-over. "I have to be the rock." Munk does not embody the performative sympathy we think someone in that position might want; she is the constant source of no-bullshit straight talk, relentless positivity, and unshakable dearest that Paul Basagoitia actually needs. A year later, every bit the two of them contend over whether he should try fetal-stem-cell therapy, Nichole tells him, "You're not a very pleasant person to exist around right at present." They offer a real, unvarnished look at what it takes to be a partner and caregiver during this kind of life-altering ordeal.
Particularly for active people, the thought of waking up paralyzed is, to infringe Paul's word, a nightmare.
Andrew's injury has go the sun around which nosotros orbit. It has its own gravitational pull, which overpowers that of the small-scale planets our lives used to revolve around: our bikes, our careers, our friends, our families. After July twenty, life became a sleep-deprived blur of commuting up and down a traffic-choked interstate, days and nights spent in hospitals, and, once I went back to work, struggling to reintegrate into a new task I'd just started three weeks before his crash. Information technology was, plainly put, exhausting. I could sense, on a few occasions, that when friends and family dropped in on the states, they thought I could exist more doting—nicer, more than attentive, fussing over him more. But as Andrew has gotten more than self-sufficient—he spends almost of his day in a wheelchair but can walk short distances on forearm crutches—he doesn't need someone to hover over him or shield him from the hard emotional piece of work of making the best of this shitty situation. He needs someone to scrape the snow off his car early in the morning so he can get to PT, to carry the numberless back in from the grocery store, and to call him out or make him smiling or do both at the same time and then he tin self-arrest during the inevitable slides into darkness. He doesn't need a nurse. He needs a partner.
Since Andrew'southward injury, I have idea of Nichole Munk ofttimes. In my listen, she's an example of what it ways to be the back up someone needs, not just the support everyone expects you to exist. We should all hope to take and be the kind of partner she is.
At its cadre, this movie is an instructional. But for whom? The genre of disability stories too easily falls into the trap of inspiration porn for an able-bodied audience. But from the kickoff clips Paul took in the infirmary, Any I of Us didn't brainstorm as a documentary for the rest of us. In a way, it often feels similar a chat between people living with an SCI. Nosotros are allowed in to listen, watch, and learn.
When Basagoitia started filming himself, he told me, he didn't know what he was going to do with the footage. He just had the sense that his experience might one solar day help others going through the aforementioned thing. As early as the twenty-four hour period he got his staples out from his back surgery, a couple of weeks subsequently his crash, he said into the camera, "I just promise this can be a guide for someone else." One of the well-nigh challenging aspects of a spinal-string injury is uncertainty. The delicate bundle of nerve fibers that carries letters from your brain to the remainder of your body, and which also regulates sensory, motor, and autonomic part, is highly susceptible to damage and heals slowly once injured, if at all. Virtually recovery takes identify inside 18 months to two years, but the neurological recovery of every person is different, and it is incommunicable to know what you lot'll regain.
When Paul began collaborating with Villena and Red Balderdash, the intentions for the film became twofold—to be a field manual for people living with an SCI and to enhance awareness most their feel. Awareness leads to involvement, which leads to funding for a cure—which doesn't currently exist for spinal-cord injuries, though some experimental therapies have shown promise. Until now, awareness has been critically defective, Basagoitia told me in Reno. Since the late actor Christopher Reeve, who suffered an SCI while horseback riding, passed in 2004, the popular media has largely overlooked it. Whatever One of Us was just ane of two feature-length documentaries I could find online about the topic. (The other was Coming to My Senses, released in 2018.)
Basagoitia holds nothing back in educating viewers nigh the reality of an SCI. One of the rawest scenes of the picture shows Paul nude in front end of the hospital toilet in the centre of the night, inserting a catheter to urinate. It takes him over seven minutes. There is footage of Nichole helping him bathe. It'due south a searingly honest look into what people with an SCI suffer on a daily basis. But it must also exist said that both Paul and Andrew were relatively fortunate; both were paralyzed below the waist, with incomplete injuries—their cords were non totally severed. Those with complete injuries face a life of paralysis with little hope of significant recovery. At Craig Hospital, Andrew and I too interacted with quadriplegic patients, some of whom were learning to control powered wheelchairs using their jiff. In i scene, after he arrives at Craig, Paul tells the camera somberly, "There'south not one person here at the hospital who isn't in a wheelchair. In fact, in that location's a lot of people who are in worse situations."
As the film follows Paul through his recovery, the viewer comes to relate with the experience of finding triumph in the smallest victories—a feeling Andrew and I have come to know well. He would text me to tell me a new muscle strand had started twitching or that he had stood for a total 30 seconds on his own. But at that place are big wins, likewise. Villena selected an impressive grouping to represent the chorus: author Annette Ross, who wrote a memoir after her injury; Chelsie Hill, who started a wheelchair dance team; Jesse Billauer, who became the adaptive world champion of surfing in 2015. As for Paul, he makes his fashion back onto the bike most a year subsequently his injury. His first ride is captured on picture show, and his pure joy is palpable.
These moments, which are paired with a stirring merely not overly melodramatic soundtrack, are emotional, but information technology's more than than voyeuristic inspiration. Information technology'south a shared sense of triumph that'southward earned subsequently bearing witness to the hardships of this injury. And for anyone living with an SCI, the scenes of those in the chorus walking, playing basketball game, dancing, and riding a bike again are a powerful hope that your best days can yet lie earlier you.
Perhaps that is one of the greatest accomplishments of this film, that it manages to speak to both audiences. Andrew and I know this because we've seen the film twice. The beginning time, nosotros were deeply affected by the experience and conclusion of this community. We learned that, with resolve, life in a wheelchair could in fact be richer and more cute than life earlier it. We saw that it's a defect, a issues coded into our human nature, that we never know how to truly appreciate what we have until we lose it.
The second time we watched the moving-picture show, ii weeks before information technology aired on HBO and three months after our own SCI journey began, we were searching for the mutual threads betwixt our story and those of others who had been through information technology before. This time we were hunting for clues that would show us the manner forrad. We cried when nosotros saw them over and over.
Paul Basagoitia wanted to be a guide for how to beat out a spinal-string injury. With Any One of Us, he ended up creating a guide for how to live. This pic is more than an inspirational story. It is a testimony. It is a map through hell. It is a gift of hope.
Source: https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/books-media/any-one-of-us-documentary-review/
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