Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist

The tongue-in-cheek, sensationalistic title gives little indication of the tender, revelatory moments at the core of Kirby Dick's Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist. Born with cystic fibrosis, Flanagan dedicated his life to stretching, flogging, piercing, burning, and otherwise mutilating his unreliable body, and he invited the art world to watch. Thanks to Flanagan's desire to record his pain, Dick was allowed access to some of the artist's most personal moments with his dominatrix, manager, and partner, Sheree Rose. It would be difficult to make an uninteresting film about these two, but Dick's subjective stance on the project insures that they're never merely used for shock value; the on-camera record of Flanagan's driving a nail through the head of his penis is nothing compared to the grainy footage of the artist's slow, quiet death. Sick shares a place with 1994's Crumb as an unflinching, complex vindication of marginalized art forms and the individuals who pioneer them. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide