Invisible Disability and the Horror of Pain in Crimes of The Future
Saul stiffens, moves painfully and disjointed, groaning and trying to shift to hide the extricating feeling of waking up. I’ve been there, it’s every morning for me. Trying to get my hips and spine working in junction with each other so I can pull the covers back. I take a deep breath as I stretch. Saul breathes as his body absorbs the reality of being awake, he knows a life of pain, I don’t know if I’ll ever know a life free from pain. Specialists and the chronically ill community tell stories of remission and absence of pain; this is a goal that we all aim for.
In an article titled Criminal Bodies: Life With Disabilities is The Crime of The Future, Radillo (2022) posits that the film depicts the life of Saul living with a disability. Throughout the film we witness Saul accessing accomodations to help him sleep by anticipating his pain and his BreakFaster chair that helps with the digestion of his food. Whilst we can see the anguish in Saul’s face, the cause of his pain he is experiencing is not visible. One aspect of my chronic illness is that I have debated its validity through telling myself “others have it worse”, “no one will believe you, you look fine” and “you can’t be in that much pain, you can walk”. Through seeing characters like Saul struggle with an invisible disability, I have found connectedness and have also found more empathy for my own disability.
Crimes of The Future depicts a variety of themes and concepts that are tackled through our everyday lives: autonomy, power, control, class—one that I’ve recently connected to the way in which Saul struggles with the debilitating elements of accelerated evolution syndrome—invisible to the audience. The depiction of Saul as someone afflicted by the ailments caused by accelerated evolution syndrome imitates similar symptoms that I have personally endured through my own chronic illness. Earlier this year I was diagnosed with non-radial ankylosing spondylitis and psoriatic arthritis, two separate auto-immune diseases that cause my immune system to attack my lower spinal column and my major joints, eventually the lower vertebrates in my spine will fuse together. Most recently I have had my medication changed and the transition period has left me in the most pain I have been in for months, at one point I struggled to walk. It’s been a very serious twelve months and there is no reprieve on the horizon for now.
Even though we cannot see Saul’s disabilities or his organs evolving, he is cast aside, reduced to no one of significance to society. This is a challenge that I have been trying to overcome of late, accepting that I am disabled. Accepting that society will throw challenges my way to prove something or show them that I need the accommodations provided. Disabilities--invisible or not--cause society to recoil, I’ve recognised the signs, not only because I’m attuned to people’s reactions, but because I have caused myself to recoil at the word: disabled. My body does not care for me, or how it disrupts my functionality, and I see the signs in Saul: the despair and the recoil.
There’s a part of me that is curious as to what led up to Saul knowing what his condition was. Were there copious amounts of tests? Was his blood drawn every twelve weeks? What were the noticeable signs for him that something wasn’t right? Wrapped in a black hooded coat and huddled into Caprice, Saul makes his way to the office of the National Organ Registry, where he is treated like a medical mystery. When people think about disabled bodies, visibility is usually the first thing to come to mind, whether consciously or not. While there are no visible signs of Saul’s illness we are told to believe that he is sick, that his insides are controlling his pain.
At the end of Crimes of The Future, Saul takes a bite into the life changing purple bar that he was given. There’s a moment of sheer relief as his chair stops moving to help his digestive system, he almost seems like he is finally at peace. It’s an incredibly touching moment; to witness someone in so much pain finally have a moment of respite. There are times where I hope that I will have my moment of respite. The reality of living with a disability is that I might not get that moment, and that’s something I am learning to live with.
