Decoding Annie Parker Explained

Decoding Annie Parker
Director:Steven Bernstein
Producer:Steven Bernstein
Keith Kjarval
Clark Peterson
Stuart W. Ross
Ron Senkowski
Johnathan Brownlee
Mary Vernieu
Starring:Samantha Morton
Alice Eve
Maggie Grace
Rashida Jones
Chris Mulkey
Aaron Paul
Richard Schiff
Marley Shelton
Corey Stoll
Bradley Whitford
Helen Hunt
Music:Steven Bramson
Cinematography:Ted Hayash
Editing:Douglas Crise
Studio:Dorado Media and Capital
Media House Capital
Story and Film
Ozymandias Productions
Distributor:Entertainment One Films
Runtime:91 minutes
Country:United States
Language:English

Decoding Annie Parker is a 2013 American drama film written and directed by Steven Bernstein. The film stars Samantha Morton, Helen Hunt and Aaron Paul. The film tells the story of Annie Parker[1] and the discovery of the BRCA1 breast cancer gene.

Plot

Eleven-year-old Annie Parker is living the perfect young life, loved by all, and especially by her mother, father, and older sister. But none of them knows that something horrible is stalking their perfect family. On a fall afternoon in 1976, young Annie hears a noise from upstairs. Her mother has collapsed and died, and an agonizing downward spiral begins.

At UC Berkeley, a brilliant research geneticist named Mary-Claire King is embarking on something of a personal crusade to uncover the genetic roots of breast cancer. While still in her twenties, she has already made a famous discovery that made the cover of the prestigious journal Science—quantifying the genetic variation between humans and chimpanzees.[2] But her conviction that there is a hereditary basis to at least some forms of breast cancer is not widely shared. Nevertheless, her tireless research throughout the 1980s would end in a medical breakthrough—the discovery of the location of the BRCA1 hereditary breast cancer gene—considered one of the most important scientific discoveries of the twentieth century.[3]

At the age of 19, after the sudden death of her father, Annie marries Paul and soon is pregnant. She struggles to find a way in the world with her equally young but misguided husband and her older sister, Joan Parker who tries to become a surrogate parent to Anne. But, cruelly, Joan contracts the same cancer that killed their mother, and in a few months, she, too, is dead.

Annie is diagnosed with the same disease that killed her mother and sister—breast cancer. It is severe, and surgery and chemotherapy, with all the accompanying difficulties, soon follow. She loses her hair, and if that wasn't enough to endure, her husband, never really mature or stable, has begun an affair with Annie’s closest friend Louise, and leaves her. Paul is soon diagnosed with cancer and expires shortly before she is diagnosed with a second cancer.

While Annie struggles, King is pursuing her belief that some forms of breast and ovarian cancer have a hereditary basis. While she captures headlines for her work applying DNA fingerprinting to help reunite "the disappeared" with their families in Argentina, her priority is to map the breast cancer gene. King focuses on collecting families with a particularly high incidence of breast cancer, suspecting that these cases are most likely to reveal any genetic predispositions. Advances in genetic mapping through the 1980s gradually allow her team to embark on studies to map the location of the BRCA1 gene. Finally, in 1990, King and her team find conclusive evidence linking DNA markers on chromosome 17 with an inherited flaw in a gene dubbed BRCA1. The work was presented at the American Society of Human Genetics conference in Cincinnati, and published in Science a short time later.[4]

Mary Claire King ended up on the cover of Time, and Anne Parker finally had the answer she herself had long sought. Annie Parker happily remarried, and a few years later contracted cancer for a third time. And survives again. And she laughed while being treated, for reasons only she knew and understood.

Production

Filming began in October 2011 and wrapped in November 2011. Post-production was completed in 2012.

Awards

2014 Milan International Film Festival:

Release

The film was released domestically by Entertainment One Films simultaneously in theaters and video-on-demand on May 2, 2014.

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Meet the woman behind 'Decoding Annie Parker'. Samantha Highfill . 2 May 2014.
  2. 10.1126/science.1090005. Evolution at two levels in humans and chimpanzees. Science. 188. 4184. 107–16. 1975. King . M.. Wilson . A. . 1090005.
  3. Book: Davies, Kevin . Michael . White . Breakthrough: The Race to Find the Breast Cancer Gene . New York . John Wiley & Sons . 1996 . 0-471-12025-1 . registration .
  4. 10.1126/science.2270482. Linkage of early-onset familial breast cancer to chromosome 17q21. Science. 250. 4988. 1684–9. 1990. Hall . J.. Lee . M.. Newman . B. . Morrow . J.. Anderson . L.. Huey . B. . King . M. . 2270482.