The Devil is Busy (now streaming on HBO Max) is a concise, heartwrenching snapshot of a post-Roe v Wade America. Directors Geeta Gandbhir (who collaborated with Spike Lee on Katrina: Come Hell and High Water) and Christalyn Hampton capture multitudes in a 31-minute documentary that spends a day observing people who work at the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta, which is consistently besieged by clients and protesters – and, you won’t be surprised to learn, represents the country’s current state of personal and political division and anxiety.
The Gist: It’s crucial to note that Tracii is a Christian. She’s the head of security at the health center, which offers abortion care and a variety of other healthcare services for women. She starts her day at 6 a.m. with a room-by-room check for potential intruders. She sets out snacks for patients, some of whom have driven from out of state and may be at the clinic for many hours. Then she prays. “It’s gonna be a long day,” she says, and you get the sense that this job consists of an unending string of long days. She greets the support security guards as they arrive – they’re sent by an outside firm, and they’re “consistently inconsistent,” she says, but she does her best. Then she talks about the “resident protesters” who arrive every day and set up at the perimeter of the property with megaphones and placards. It’s crucial to note they’re Christians too, but the gulf between them and Tracii seems almost vast.
This is, Tracii says, “a high-stress situation.” It’s also an average day at the center. They have 46 appointments. Protesters verbally berate patients as they arrive and walk to the door of the clinic. Security guards instruct patients to back into parking spots so protesters can’t see their license plates. There’s a steady stream of biblical proselytizing in the background, erupting from a loudspeaker and bleeding into multiple scenes. We meet a variety of workers at the clinic, their names withheld: An appointment manager turns away a caller whose pregnancy is past Georgia’s six-week abortion ban, referring her to clinics in Florida. A sonogram technician gives good news to a patient: she’s relieved to learn that she’s just under the six-week cutoff point. A doctor talks about how many women don’t even realize they’re pregnant until well after six weeks, and how exceptions to the law are a gray area that has her fearing legal trouble for making a judgment call.
Meanwhile, Tracii tries her damnedest to shield patients from the constant tirades emanating from the other side of the property line. She shares her own heartbreaking story about an abortion she had when she was young, and the twins she lost later in life; she’s now middle-aged, divorced and childless. She knows the protesters – notably all men – by name, and reveals how one is an ex-con who repented in prison and claims he’s been forgiven; she then opines on his hypocrisy, since he refuses to offer forgiveness to others. Tracii then ends her day as she likely always does, in tears and prayer.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Recent fictional films that address the current chaotic state of legal abortion in the U.S.: Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Unpregnant, Happening, Call Jane.
Performance Worth Watching: Tracii’s display of raw, honest emotion is deeply moving; a closeup shot of her encapsulates the warmth, concern, empathy and fear she likely wrestles with every day.
Memorable Dialogue: Tracii: “Unfortunately, God’s word is interpreted to meet the needs of the people that are interpreting it.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Re: Tracii’s quote above. She clarifies a little while later: “The god I serve is a forgiving god,” she says, adding that the god served by the protesters outside is one who casts judgment. This is half of the dual-pronged thesis of The Devil is Busy, which, as the title implies, illustrates the troublesome dichotomy of religion. Gandbhir and Hampton’s camera obviously sympathizes with the side of the debate that leans toward compassion over condemnation, and the picture that forms is one of futility – shouting slogans or bible verses will never convince others to change their worldview. But such is the current state of the U.S., which is so culturally divided it seems all but hopeless.
The sonogram tech plainly states the other half of the thesis: “Will we ever, with women’s health, get past the ‘A word’? … Society and politics are stuck on this one. I never thought that I would, 25 years ago, have more rights than my daughter does now.” The issue with the film is, it focuses almost solely on the “A word”; it takes a quick look at the clinic’s website to see what other women’s health services it offers, from menopause and postpartum care to STD treatment and contraception. The variety of services should be a given, but when critics of these centers selectively ignore the less controversial services for the divisive one, it might serve the film’s core argument to plainly state such things, or address why some women don’t just choose to have abortions, but need them to preserve their health.
But The Devil is Busy’s strength lies in its fly-on-the-wall method; it doesn’t get bogged down in explaining things. The directors pieced together an intimate and complex portrait of American society in microcosm, through simple observation of the facility’s day-to-day operations. It subtextually asserts the need for people to seek understanding instead of punishment or persuasion, and the complexity of the core argument emerges in Tracii’s personal story, her anguish, which illuminates questions in the abortion debate that society likely will never be able to answer. Life is not black and white, no matter how much we try to make it so.
Our Call: Don’t be surprised if The Devil is Busy lands an Oscar nomination for best documentary short. It’s powerful. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.