Secret People . Austin Chronicle . 03-29-99

Secret People

DIRECTED BY: John Anderson

REVIEWED: 03-29-99

Secret People is about the efforts of nearly 300 Americans to "find a place of comfort" when the world offered them no comfort whatsoever. The subjects of Secret People are victims of Hansen's Disease, better known as leprosy, and in the first half of this century and into the second, any American diagnosed with Hansen's Disease was sent to Carville, Louisiana to live -- for good -- in a government-run institution. Anderson questions whether Carville really was a place of comfort for its virtual inmates: Barbed wire fences ringed Carville and any patient who needed to leave had to be transported out on a special train whose only endpoint was Carville. Moments of levity are interspersed with the pathos, however, and Anderson eventually makes it clear that though Carville's residents may have been prisoners, most of them were able to forge their own lives.

--Clay Smith

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