Mission to Lars

[projekktor id=’21217′]

Mission to Lars is a documentary directed by James Moore and William Spicer. The film actually premiered in the U.K. all the way back in 2012 and is only new getting a Canadian release.

Tom Spicer has Fragile X Syndrome and has spent his adult life in a residential care home; ignored, for the most part, by his siblings, Kate and Will. He has only ever asked them for one thing, to meet Lars Ulrich, drummer with Metallica. Mission to Lars follows the three siblings as Kate and Will decide to break their severely autistic brother Tom out of his home in a sleepy English town and take him to America to find Lars. Any dreams of a bonding rock n roll roadtrip fade as Kate and Will’s struggle to understand their brother’s condition, while Tom confronts the challenges of his syndrome and the ignorance and noise in the outside world. There is also the little matter of finding Lars…

In an interview with Geeks of Doom, Kate Spicer talked about how her brother’s condition made going to concerts difficult. “If you watch the film he refuses to go quite a lot. He won’t let us park in the car park of the first gig we go to so the whole process of the film is about a lot of different things, but one of the things it’s about is about me and Will learning enough about Tom’s condition and ergo Tom so that we can make things easier for him. So Tom overcoming some of those fears and explaining to us what will make it easier for him. The process is sort of a two-way understanding.”