“This Much We Know” is a disjointed, if impactful, documentary

This film review includes mentions of suicide

In 2008, a presenter on NPR dubbed Las Vegas the suicide capital of the United States, with residents 50% more likely to take their own lives than those who live in any other state. It is also a city near an enormous store of nuclear waste – enough to kill four times the city’s population. Neither of these are perfect metrics, but the unnerving facts drive filmmaker L. Frances Henderson to investigate the human circumstances and possible connecting factors behind the statistics.

This Much We Know is the result, a documentary film whose title is both open statement and infuriating limitation as Henderson’s exploration veers from the individual to societal with not enough connective tissue to make the jumps work. The film opens with by retracing the known last steps of teenager Levi Presley, who died by suicide in Las Vegas in 2002. This case grabs Henderson’s attention; she is omnipresent on screen as she searches (hopes) for clues that point towards the accidental or explicable, talking with Presley’s loved ones as well as coroners and public health officials. In perhaps the film’s most compelling sequence, she questions why homicide has many categorisations – accidental, manslaughter, murder, and so forth – but suicide has only one. 

This uber-involved angle removes detachment from the emotive subject, a strong choice for a topic so often discussed in hushed tones. By comparison, and to the film’s detriment, the nuclear waste exploration feels a hair away from conspiracy theory material, a search for existential answers in government policy.

This Much We Know is a thorny film to dissect; there is clearly much personal at stake. Henderson’s own investment and grief (she also lost a friend to suicide) is the catalyst, and judging and processing the impossible rationalisations of sudden bereavement without introspection hampers the impact in the end. 

Ultimately, This Much We Know treads through sensitive materials with a real sense of grief and a profound lack of delicacy, especially off kilter in its approach to Henderson’s own losses and the losses of her subjects’ families. She presses forward with the bereaved friends and family of the deceased despite clearly capturing their discomfort on screen; at the same time, she does not even reveal the name of the friend she lost to suicide. Henderson’s hand proves too heavy, and under its weight the sensitive material takes on a scurrilous sheen. This Much We Know reveals nothing by its conclusion beyond the limits of forced enquiry and the profundity of loss.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 in the United States or call 116 123 / text SHOUT to 85258 in the UK. Go here for more international resources.