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.

This was an excellent breakdown of the complex relationships between hospital staff, patients, and their families and how their mannerisms change around and away from each other. One could call the film a tragedy, but as we gradually realize over the course of its nearly six-hour runtime, the tragedy at the heart of their jobs is just a regular part of everyday work.

I was mildly saddened by the fates and situations of a couple patients shown early on, but like the doctors, I realized the survival rate of the patients was low and adjusted myself to that fact. Thus making every minute of its runtime necessary. One doctor, for instance, explained how her first week was the hardest since none of her patients were pulling through but she quickly realized most of what she can do is simply delay the inevitable and minimize their pain as much as possible, as opposed to save them. Other doctors occasionally vent their frustrations about the patients and joke about their situations behind their back, but a lot of this could very well be a coping mechanism they use to deal with the stress of their jobs. Because whenever the doctors are around the families, they always display an utmost sense of honesty and respect. They need to walk a fine balancing act with being honest about the dire situation at hand and the odds of the patients pulling through, while remaining respectful to the agency of the patient and the family in being the ultimate deciding factor of what medical procedures they're comfortable undergoing, being careful not to offend in the process.

The patients' situations being unpredictable and subject to change at any given moment is on full display throughout but perhaps most achingly exemplified through an elderly female patient who's clearly not all there given her constant uncertainty and variable responses to the doctors' questions on how to proceed. With her mental decline influencing her contradictory responses and constant requests to keep "thinking about it", one can feel each agonizing minute of her time slowly running out. Even with the other patients, the doctors consistently specify that any procedure they do comes with potential consequences and the patient will need to be constantly monitored throughout them every step of the way. The unpredictability of the future makes the present situation of the patients so finite. There's no way for them to go but forward.

Like the other documentaries I've seen from Wiseman so far, he doesn't need to spell out the themes of his work or include any voiceovers/exposition which outline them. The fly on the wall look at his subjects speaks for itself and says all that's needed. That said, I think I prefer Titicut Follies.

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

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.

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.