A film about the spread of AIDS and the social, medical and religious challenges it offers.  It is made up of three separate stories (though with a unifying voiceover by Olympia Dukakis) from three quite diverse parts of the world, reminding us of the global culture that cuts across boundaries.

 The film was written by Thom Fitzgerald, a Canadian director who made The Hanging Garden, Beefcake and The Event.  Fitzgerald has a Catholic background which is evident in two of the stories.  He also has focused on homosexuality themes and AIDS in other films (especially The Event and the issue of  assisted dying).  In 3 Needles, the nature of the illness is never named directly as AIDS but is referred to as the virus.

Fitzgerald has given titles to each of the three stories, each with religious implications:  The Patience of the Buddha, The Passion of the Christ, The Innocence of the Pagans.  Fitzgerald wants to communicate his message via narrative and immerses the audience in the three worlds. 

However, the film starts with a prologue in South Africa with an episode that will be background to the third story.  A group of young men experience initiation rites in the bush, especially circumcision, before they return to their communities as men (in the context of the AIDS epidemic in Africa).

Lucy Liu is the star of The Patience of the Buddha.  In southern China, Jin Ping (Liu) operates a blood donor racket, giving simple villagers $5.00 which can change their lives, help them buy seed and oxen.  However, when a whole village is infected with the virus, the authorities have to step in.  It is a sad story of poverty and death.  Jin Ping is herself pregnant, with a sick husband.  Sam, one of the local farmers, has a successful crop – but at what cost.

After the beautiful Asian settings, we are taken to suburbia in Montreal, rather dark, rather drab, for The Passion of the Christ.  A young porn star argues about condom use or not and the film-makers consider the dangers of infection.  The young man’s father is on life-support and his son takes his father’s blood as substitute for his own tests.  His mother does not know what he does for a living.  When circumstances change, the loving mother wants to do the best for her son, taking out a huge life insurance policy and wanting to be infected by the virus so that she can die and help her son.  Stockard Channing is the mother, Shawn Ashmore the young man.  Mel Gibson’s Jesus-film was about blood and giving one’s life for others, so Fitzgerald has chosen this title for his contemporary Montreal passion.

The third story is more specifically religious, focusing on the situation of the virus in Africa and its effect on old and young, men and women.  Three North American nuns arrive to work with the people.  The older nun, Sister Hilde (Olympia Dukakis) is in the tradition of the saving of souls and a less ecumenical approach to religion.  Sister Mary John (Sandra Oh) is committed and is comfortable with people.  The third is a dedicated novice, Sister Clara (Chloe Sevigny), who wants to save the living.

This story is more complex than the other two.  It highlights the work of sisters (in a post Dead Man Walking era) and contemporary mission work of working with local people.  It takes on what one might call a Graham Greene approach to storytelling, introducing moral dilemmas that haunt Greene characters: doing something immoral for a greater good.  This is the issue for the novice and is disturbing according to one’s own moral stances.

The film ends with Sister Hilde’s voiceover.  She is talking about holiness, saints, ordinary people doing ordinary things well without hope of canonisation or a feast day – which means many of us may really be saints.

Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto:

Be first to comment this article

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.