Near Death

It's quite depressing because people are constantly down in this movie energies presented as a real-life sing so why would anybody want to see people that I know these sick individuals with like this and yes it is interesting to see how the doctor's deal with these things like life and death for the rest it's not so interesting one of the lesser great documentaries of the wonderful documentary maker Frederick Wiseman.

Grueling in both subject matter and running time, _Near Death_ nonetheless poses questions that most of us will have to answer, at some point in our lives, for either ourselves or a loved one. Do what extent should measures be taken to preserve a life that might be full of pain and sustained by a machine? Should the goal for terminally ill patients with little hope of recovery be life support, or comfort? At what point do we give up hope of recovery? While expressing ample skepticism about the function of much of our society's expensive, intrusive life-support technology, _Near Death_ also gives us little glimmers of hope - if only regarding the degree to which we can support each other in coming to terms with death, pain, and degeneration. The warmth and patience of one Dr. Taylor in this film is especially heartening, and very istructive in understanding, in human terms, the medical and philosophical issues at play. An unforgettable viewing experience

A very long documentary, but you can't stop watching it even after the 4th hour. the footage was taken in an intensive unit care of a Boston hospital and it is simply about the world in there, a world made of medical doctors and nurses, near to death patients and their desperate relatives. A small world that lives constantly on the verge of a crucial boundary, the one between life and death, a world that is not meant to be inhabited for too long and in which everybody tries to find a self protective routine. The desperate relatives with their cries and tries of find an escape in the medical daily reports leading to an impossible recovery of their beloved ones. The hopeless and impotent patients with their silent pain and their belonging already to another world. The compassionate but always rational doctors that gained a sort of self powering attitude from living between life and death and are in fact just able to endless discussions. Wiseman is able to use these reality cuts and to make a novel out of them, still portraying the reality and in a beautifully 'dirty' black and white. Or better, in grey, this is how death is: and this is what this film is about, death and the poor means that every men and women of every status and education have to deal with it.

It's good fly-on-the-wall documentary filmmaking, but I do wonder why it's so long. I don't think many of the scenes themselves should've been shorter- maybe just that there were too many scenes for one whole film. I wish it had been divided into parts so it wasn't just one big film that (likely) needs to be watched as a whole. Or at least it seems intended to be watched as a whole- I can't find any info regarding it being split into parts, or originally being a miniseries or anything.

There's some truly eye-opening stuff, and information that every human being would benefit from learning or experiencing. For that, there are essential scenes which usually would warrant a higher score than 3.5/5. But it's all thrown into one mammoth six-hour film that 99.99% of people would never touch with a 358-foot-long pole, even if most of them would get something out of this. And even those who do build up the courage to watch it may be a tad too exhausted by its end. Again, it's supposed to be emotionally exhausting and draining, I'm sure, but maybe not in this way or to this extent.

Near Death is not just a documentary-it's a philosophical confrontation with mortality, grief, and the frailty of human systems. Wiseman strips away sensationalism to deliver an emotionally dense, intellectually piercing immersion into the terminal ward of Beth Israel Hospital. At 358 minutes, this is not for casual viewing, but for those who stay, it's a quietly overwhelming experience. The film's strength lies in its observational honesty: no voiceover, no music, just the machinery of life and death, patients and doctors, uncertainty and exhaustion. Conversations unfold in real time, as families navigate impossible decisions and medical staff walk the line between duty and despair. What might have been clinical becomes deeply human, with the absence of cinematic devices only amplifying its emotional intensity. It's slow, yes, and structurally unyielding-but for a viewer attuned to its rhythm, Near Death is a searing lesson in humility and care. In a landscape flooded with glossy hospital dramas and manipulative reality shows, Wiseman's stark lens restores integrity and invites reflection, not spectacle.