INDESTRUCTIBLE
By Sam Sweet
LA Weekly

At age 31, Ben Byer, an aspiring actor and playwright from Chicago, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the fatal neurodegenerative disorder also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Like most people diagnosed with ALS, Byer was given two to five years to live. The stark urgency of that prognosis spurred him to collaborate with childhood friend and documentarian Roko Belic (Genghis Blues) on Indestructible, in which Byer turns the camera on himself as he confronts the onset of an illness for which there is no certain cause. Though it’s anchored in one young man’s story, the film contains two separate documentaries. The first intends to raise awareness about ALS and a Westernized health-care system unable to adequately treat a disease about which so little is known. We follow Byer from his parents’ home in Wisconsin to Greece, Jamaica and Beijing, where he experiments with alternative medicines, ranging from marijuana to a controversial brain-surgery procedure, and visits with other ALS patients. The second documentary focuses on Byer’s struggle with the emotional and spiritual toll of the disease. He approaches patients, doctors and religious leaders with the same plaintive, unfathomable question: “Why did this happen to me?” Byer’s sincerity is the grounding force in a film that serves as a wrenching reminder that the answers to our most essential questions must come from within. (Grande 4-Plex)