Gleason

Steve Gleason may be best known as the New Orleans Saints safety who successfully blocked a punt in the first home game at the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina in 2006. That play resonated far and wide as a karmic indicator of rebirth and healing for the city, the way only a professional sport can be relied on to randomly do such things. But Gleason charts that milestone prior to the opening credits. The real story here is Gleason being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (aka Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 2011, at the age of 34, and then finding out, six weeks later, that his wife Michel is pregnant with their first child. Realizing that ALS will rob him of the faculties to be a proper father, Gleason starts a video blog for his then-unborn child, expressing who he is and offering fatherly advice while he still has the ability to do so.

That footage makes up most of Gleason, and as ALS ravages his body, taking away muscle movement, speech, and, in a harrowing/hilarious/devastating scene, control of his bowels, the film becomes an honest and raw look at a family dealing with crisis. Nothing is out of bounds here, since every aspect of Gleason’s degenerative disease is tackled as well as his increasingly tenuous bonds with his devoutly religious father and his wife Michel, who is the linchpin in this story, trying to figure out how to raise a child and care for a man who suffering from a crippling disease. Brutally frank, and with a biting sense of humor and an earnest love for her husband, Michel, at least for me, becomes the emotional center from which the film radiates. It is all a messy, emotionally charged, and consistently pummeling affair whose motivation rightly calls attention to the plight of those suffering from ALS. During this film, I burst into tears more times than anything I’ve seen in the last five years, and I’m easy. But Gleason, while shining a light on an incredibly horrible disease and one goofy jock/dudebro/Pearl Jam fan’s plight dealing with a new reality comes second in the film’s depiction of a family banding together when it’s needed. Pack your pockets with tissues.