So Much So Fast (2006)
A humbling and inspiring chronicle of one man's tireless efforts to save the life of his terminally ill younger brother, So Much So Fast is a powerful testament to the resiliency and courage of two extraordinary men. Five years in the making, this absorbing documentary from Oscar-nominated filmmakers Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan (Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern) immerses you in the lives of brothers Jamie and Stephen Heywood, temperamental opposites bound by a fierce love and a refusal to concede defeat when Stephen is diagnosed with ALS. How they and the rest of the Heywood family weather this crisis is treated with the utmost candor, sensitivity, and wry good humor in So Much So Fast.
In the medical community, ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) has long been referred to as an "orphan disease," due to the relatively limited public and private funding for research into this progressive neuromuscular illness that claimed the life of baseball great Lou Gehrig. But when Jamie Heywood's good-natured, low-key younger brother Stephen is stricken with ALS at age 29, Jamie, a MIT-educated mechanical engineer, decides to buck the medical research system and jump-start the research for a cure by establishing the ALS Therapy Development Foundation. Driven, charismatic, and aggressive, Jamie channels all his considerable energy and ambition into funding alternative and radical drug therapies that might help Stephen, who bravely tries to maintain a semblance of normalcy in his life by getting married and fathering a little boy. Although ALS eventually forces Stephen into a mechanized wheelchair and robs him of the power of speech, he faces the inevitable without a shred of self-pity. Meanwhile, Jamie keeps pushing scientists and ALS researchers to find a cure, even as he's dealt his own share of family strife.
So Much So Fast was a highly personal project for the filmmakers; Jordan's mother, seen in Troublesome Creek, died from ALS. They first learned of the Heywoods' incredible story by reading Jonathan Weiner's 2000 New Yorker profile of the brothers. Granted virtually unlimited access to record the daily struggles and triumphs of both Jamie and Stephen, the filmmakers capture the emotional and physical impact of ALS on the entire Heywood family with unflinching intimacy. If So Much So Fast is sometimes a little too sketchily rendered—for instance, it's never entirely clear just how Jamie sets up his "guerrilla-science research" foundation—this Sundance Grand Jury Prize/Audience Award-winning documentary is nonetheless a deeply moving and uplifting portrait of uncommon grace and valor.
— TIM KNIGHT