The monologist Spalding Gray sits in a chair and tells us about his neurotic, event-filled life. This time (1996), he's diagnosed with "macular pucker," an eye condition that is normally corrected surgically with a "scraping." Raised a Christian Scientist but probably thoroughly agnostic, Gray remains doctor-phobic and decides to investigate alternative forms of treatment. He goes to a Native American sweat lodge, a "dietary opthalmologist" who puts him on a strict vegetarian diet, and even takes a trip to the Philippines to see a "psychic surgeon" who performs "surgery without knives." There are also story sidetrips into his mother's drinking and suicide, and a tale of the time Gray was taken for a Bowery bum and hired by Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn to do some sweeping for them. All of this may seem a bit silly and obsessive, but director Steven Soderbergh raises the stakes by including short documentary clips of other people -- real survivors of eye trauma -- who talk about nearly or actually losing their vision in various upsetting ways, and their healing processes.
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The review of this Movie prepared by David Loftus
