The University of Idaho Argonaut

Films are supposed to be shocking, touching, beautiful and even violent, but they can also be one-dimensional at the same time.
Many violent films can’t get past the gore, shocking films don’t go beyond a knee jerk reaction, beautiful or touching films can be over the top and made for no other reason but to make the viewer cry.

“Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist” is an unlikely, but perfect combination of all of these things. 
The documentary follows Flanagan through the end of his life, all the way through his last stay in a hospital and his death.
Flanagan’s lifestyle and his work as an artist are more shocking than many can handle.
His work often revolved around his lifestyle as a masochist.
His strange sexual and artistic acts involved pins and needles, razor blades, whips, chains and even nails through the man’s most sensitive area.

The film portrays the perfect combination of the Supermasochist as an artist, a sexual being and a man dying of cystic fibrosis.
The pain and restriction he goes through with his disease perfectly intertwine with the pain he chooses to subject himself to.
The medical and the sexual implements of torture he has lived his life with intermingle in his art and in this documentary.
Though his lifestyle is so wildly different than the average viewer’s, he still somehow draws everyone to him.
He is walking controversy and at the same time a soulful human being. 

Though his body has been ravaged by disease and scarred by acts of pain, it is still beautiful and fragile.
“Sick” is as far from one-dimensional as a film can be, due in major part to the fact that Flanagan was such a multidimensional man.
There is even the element of a love story between Flanagan and his mistress, Rose.
And a nail through the privates is not the only pain the audience has to endure.
It quickly becomes evident that you are not just watching a fun piece of performance art; the audience is about to experience the death of man they have come to understand and even relate to.

He jokes that he would like someone to finance an installation where cameras would be put in his coffin.
Through coughs and breaths of oxygen he says “Whenever he wants to, the patron can see how I’m coming along.”
Seeing him dying throughout the film is hard enough, but after all of this they still have to document his death.
“The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist” is shocking to say the least, but taking a chance on the documentary’s unconventional subject matter is more than rewarding in the end.

It’s an experience that sticks with you.
Though he is now dead, Flanagan is a man that viewers will want to know more about.

Here’s what’s next in Ryli’s queue:

1. Last Tango in Paris

2. Hedwig and the Angry Inch

3. The Office, series one and two