wargentin

I found this to be a very interesting story of two brothers and their family, all devoted to music and how their lives have been shaped by the relations of the USA and Cuba as well as the differences between the two countries.

I thought the documentary didn't really take a side on the politics other than what the people whose story it tells say and didn't really spend that much time on the subject in general. To me personally it seems likely that after more than half a decade the harsh sanctions have done what they can and while pressure should still be applied on the Cuban government, in their present form they are counterproductive.

When it comes to things that could have been better I think the differences of living in either country and why people chose to live where they do could have been explored more in depth. One aspect of this documentary I enjoyed in particular was how well it used the music throughout the experience.

Having watched many documentaries dealing with the same subject I found this one to present a surprisingly different view. I had thought we had gotten better about reducing suffering in these kinds of situations in recent decades but there is no acceptance of the realities of the situation by even a single patient or their family here and most of the doctors on camera seem to do very little to help them get there either. This is very different from the meaningful & difficult discussions I saw them engage in with both each other and the families in something like Wiseman's "Near Death" for example.

Having one of the patients miraculously get better against the expectations of the doctors does offer something to be happy about in an otherwise gloomy documentary but I think it can lead to some people drawing the wrong conclusions. I am reminded of another documentary, Liz Garbus' Coma (2007), where doctors repeatedly made the point that when a year has passed patients with brain injuries very rarely get any better. I think predicting outcomes is probably just much more difficult when you are only days into recovery presenting a "one in a million" case like this alongside just a single case that's more typical ends up providing a fairly unrealistic view of how these things tend to actually go.

I usually am a fan of Theroux's work but in addition I feel like here he fails to get people open up much either. With different doctors it might have been different since I feel like Theroux is even having to suggest things that the doctors should have at points here and I can understand why he's not entirely comfortable doing their work for them. Overall I think there are many documentaries that do a better job at tackling this subject but I did appreciate getting a reality check on how rare it may be for people to really even accept that they are dying and how wildly the level of support doctors may be able to provide for them in doing that varies.

A documentary about the terminally ill and their passing that succeeds in showing that while we may imagine that people gracefully accept their death in the final days the reality is more often than not less beautiful than that. We see different people and interesting stories but I do feel like other documentaries on the same topic have managed to cover many aspects in more depth. All in all it was nevertheless thought-provoking and I'm thankful to everyone involved for letting it be filmed.