Harrowing documentary 'Lorena' should be essential viewing

I was old enough to be fairly cognizant of the Lorena Bobbitt case when it was going on but now I must admit that I was just as guilty as many Americans who ignorantly fixated on her alleged crime -- severing her husband's penis while he was sleeping, fleeing their home and flinging it out the window of her car -- than on the circumstances that led to it.

I remembered that her husband's penis was miraculously found, re-attached and remained functional, I recalled that John Wayne Bobbitt would go on to make a porn, and I remembered little else.

Shame on me and shame on all of us. Because this story is far more complicated and compelling and thankfully producer Jordan Peele has given this harrowing, heartbreaking case the sensitive and detailed exploration it deserves.

With 20/20 hindsight, the advent of #MeToo and about 25 years behind us, we can finally collectively see what should have been painfully obvious to any impartial observer at the time: that Lorena Bobbitt was not some manic 'woman scorned' (John Wayne Bobbitt's patently absurd claim that Lorena attacked him because he rebuffed her sexual advances would be laughable if it weren't such a heinous and destructive lie) but in reality she was the victim of systematic physical and sexual abuse, so horrific that you will most likely not just have sympathy for her but outright root for her when these four incredible episodes are done.

This film gives this case the same treatment as the O.J. Simpson trial received in the epic, landmark film O.J. Made in America, and while on the surface this story was always treated as more of a tabloid curio than that racially divisive criminal case, but what this Amazon Prime project confirms is that not only did this story dovetail with that one, but it also reveals a lot about our culture's willingness to give toxic men infinite chances and how much domestic violence was and is a non-priority in this country.

Remarkably, the film includes the participation of both Bobbitts as well as a number of character witnesses, plus people intimately involved in the story (from the officers who found his penis to the star witness whose testimony proved just how traumatized Lorena was in the days leading up to the incident.

Mr. Bobbitt, a Trump loving, gun toting pathologic liar, emerges as one of the most monstrous figures I've seen in on screen, and part of what makes him so disturbing is his utter banality. This was a perpetually unemployed, inarticulate, serial abuser of women, who somehow was elevated to the status of hero by the likes of Howard Stern and still shows no remorse (at least publicly) for his crimes.

Meanwhile, Lorena, who has since re-married and re-made her life, is revealed to be a truly inspirational human being. This film restores the dignity she was robbed of from so many glib comedians and cable news personalities who sought to exploit her and/or vilify her.

The film is appropriately called Lorena, because after all it is what was happening to her that led to all of this madness, and her experience for far too long has taken a backseat to a couple inches of appendage, and which has been the cause of such much pain for her and eventually many others.

The film is a reminder that while the scandals of the '90s seem quaint in comparison to the crisis we're currently enduring in the White House, it doesn't mean that there isn't much to learn from our very recent past.