Our Father Review – Riveting, Shocking, and Business

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Category: Streaming, Cable

Published on Tuesday, 10 May 2022 08:33

Written by Janet Walker

Our Father, a Netflix, and Blumhouse Television original, brings to the screen a riveting reenactment of bad medicine, religious hypocrisy, narcissism, and a career business decision that accelerated his practice and exposed a shocking hidden secret.

Infertility can be torture for families who desperately long to conceive. Repeated and agonizing treatments, testing, filled with often momentary elation followed by deep set depression as the cruelty of one's own body betrays them and expels every chance of conception.

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Our Father begins with a similar story. Parents, desperately want a child and so they seek out a well-known infertility specialist, with a strong track record of success. Soon, the parents were overjoyed, to them their life was complete. They were pregnant. A collage of memorable moments, firsts, graduations, life in memories, beaming parents, happy children.

We meet Jacoba Ballard, an only child, who was conceived via donor sperm, and always dreamed of having a brother or sister. She decides to take an at-home DNA test to find out if possibly the clinic used the sperm for others, which is common. This led to the discovery of not one but seven half-siblings – a number that defied best practices in fertility medicine.

Soon, the group set out to learn more about their curious family tree, they discovered the sickening truth: Their parents' fertility doctor had been inseminating his patients with his own sperm – without their knowledge or consent.

Our Father is a sordid tale of religious hypocrisy, cult led and fed Christianity, misinterpretation of scripture and more importantly, which is so common in the criminality of the rich, famous, and affluent, a façade of respectability.

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Once the story reaches the media, and it takes on a life of its own, we see the judicial system in its truest portrayal. The state Attorney General does nothing. All laws to protect this from happening are muted.

One would think if a physician were using his own sperm to inseminate patients there would be some law, rape by deception, something. There are no laws that protected these patients from this physician.

Using fresh sperm to inseminate dozens of women is considered a victimless crime. Finally, the tide turns' and we find a champion of the law, who clearly explains the unequal application of the law and the power of the façade.

Clearly the parents, the mothers were deceived. Negating their fathers love, devotion, care, as the man who raised them, seemed a bit of an overreaction as millions of adoptive children are raised by caring and loving families all the while knowing that their parents are not "biologically" theirs. I felt very strongly for the victims, they deserved their day in court.

As Ballard and her newfound siblings realized they've barely begun to untangle his dark web of deceit, their pursuit of justice, which is elusive, lies at the heart of this profoundly unsettling story about an unimaginable breach of trust. By the end of this story, we understand why Lady Justice is presented blindfolded, so she is unable to see who routinely rapes her every day as justice is repeatedly denied to victims across American through unequal application of law, the power of the faced and judicial ineptitude.

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The final statement when a sibling stated, "I don't want anything to do with him," seemed delusional to even have that thought that Dr. Donald Cline, the biological father, would want a relationship.  

Dr. Cline was all about Dr. Cline, he was not about relationship building. His "family" consisted of his wife and four children. His external procreation was sterile, mechanical, and business. With every pregnancy, each success story he gained more patients. They were nothing more than a means to an end, a successful practice, financial affluence, recognition from the community. They served him, served his purpose.

Many people find a means to an end, the theft of a co-worker's intellectual property, a patent, an idea, and it always reduces to one single decision, if not this, then what, hard work, and a long climb or cheat and immediate affluence and success? For those victims of his deception the truth of his motives are chilling but it's the way of the world.

Our Father, a shocking must see of deception, egregious breech of trust, narcissism and a career choice that elevates to the pinnacle. Riveting and true to life deception premieres on Netflix May 10, 2022. A must see!

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Country: USA.

Runtime: 97minutes.

Release date: May 11, 2022.

Directed by: Lucie Jourdan.

Produced by: Jason Blum, Lucie Jourdan, Michael Petrella, Amanda Spain.

Executive Produced by: Chris McCumber, Jeremy Gold, Mary Lisio.