Indestructible

More video diary than polished documentary, the gripping "Indestructible" is still one of the most intimate and challenging real-life depictions you'll likely see about degenerative illness. The film also rewards in perspective-altering ways, the kind sure to make viewers grateful they can perform basic tasks like removing a T-shirt or taking a bath without the Sisyphean effort of the film's courageous writer-director, Ben Byer.
Byer, who at 31 was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) -- better known as Lou Gehrig's disease -- turns the cameras on himself as he charts a three-year quest for physical and spiritual healing that took him across the U.S., to Greece, China, Jamaica, Israel and Egypt. En route, the upbeat Midwesterner, a former actor and playwright, interviews such neurologists as "Awakenings" author Oliver Sacks and YongChao Xia, creator of the intense herbal remedy BuNaoGao, along with ALS sufferers. But it's Byer's bold decision to undergo a controversial fetal-cell transplant that offers the film's most powerful moments. The commitment by an atrophying Byer and his father, Steven, to battle this "Grim Reaper of neurological disease" poignantly underscores the roulette-wheel nature of human suffering.
Da The Los Angeles Times, 16 maggio 2008