CITIZEN RUTH  (1996)  ***

Ruth, namesake of the title, is a reckless, selfish homeless addict and she just got pregnant again. After four children who live with their father, Ruth's latest comes from another man who just threw her out. The police find Ruth publicly intoxicated after another incident of paint-sniffing, and a judge convicts her of endangering her fetus. However, having dealt with Ruth on numerous occasions and seeing how she could never be a mother in any real sense of the word, he is willing to lighten her sentence if she agrees to an abortion. Into Ruth's holding cell comes pro-life activists recently arrested from a protest. One woman and her husband pay for Ruth's bail and take her home with them seeking to gain political points from Ruth's situation. Up until this point, Citizen Ruth appears to be a straightforward drama, but the film is really a very dark comedy.

The film satirizes both the Religious Right's utter denial of reality and the far Left's fanaticism with its willingness to overlook any other ideals. The pro-life activists sing hokey songs to God while lusting in their hearts or brandishing guns. Ruth's unsurprising everyday profanity is jaw-dropping to the fundamentalist Christians. The pro-choice activists promote choice but then do anything they can to push Ruth into having an abortion when the Right promises her $15,000 to have the baby. The film tries to satirize both sides evenly though the Right ultimately comes off looking more ridiculous than the Left. This is in part because the Right is easier to make fun of (hypocritical Bible-bangers and their self-righteousness) than the Left (awkwardly characterized here as lesbian moon-worshippers or Vietnam veteran hippies).

The movie is not so much about the issue of abortion as those who take issue with it, and that is part of its problem. The abortion war has gone on for so long, the movie says, that both sides are dogmatically more involved with process and procedure than actually thinking about the issue and how hypocritical and selfish their actions are. It clearly makes its point early on that both sides on the abortion issue care far more about their agendas than the people actually trying to decide whether to have an abortion. This isn't really that hard a point to make, but after making it, the movie stays with it. Like both sides on the abortion issue as depicted in the film, the film itself never transcends its own goal of satire to question the real issues behind abortion as if, again like both sides, its attitude is been there, done that. If it does indirectly address whether Ruth should have the choice to have an abortion, it is only in depicting how horrible she is. In this, it makes us question whether or not we would want someone like Ruth to have children if only for the sake of the child. Unfortunately, a late development in the film renders this decision moot.

Laura Dern is at her very best in depicting Ruth. Dern is completely convincing in Ruth's stupidity, self-absorption, and dereliction. Less effective is everyone else, especially Burt Reynolds. All the other actors have to play soulless caricatures. Only M.C. Gainey as a Vietnam vet who sees Ruth as what she is garners any real interest, and that's not so much for Gainey's acting as that his is the only other character with a semblance of independent thought. Diane Ladd, Dern's real-life mother makes an amusing cameo as Ruth's mother, now a born-again Christian.