L'Chaim: The singular life of Oliver Sacks

Directed by Ric Burns

Reviewed by Lloyd I Sederer, MD

Through this film’s lens, we the viewers are witness to the ever-unfolding sweep of his life: a Jewish boy in London of a family with towering intelligence who, at six, befriended numbers and the Periodic Table; a family that, like so many, shamefully tried to hide that Michael, an older son, had developed schizophrenia; a family that kvelled over Oliver’s precocious intellect until he told them he was gay, after he had gone off to Oxford. Read my review of "Oliver Sacks: His Own Life" in The Lancet: Psychiatry.