Release Year: 1989
Director: Frederick Wiseman
Review: I’m not sure I’ve gone into a movie with as much dread as when I started watching this. It is a six-hour long documentary on terminally ill patients in the ICU. I don’t even want to watch a one-hour documentary on the ICU. Watching people die is depressing, and with the prospect of watching it for that length of time I thought it might be enough for make me wish I were dead. I went in with the mindset I was going to abhor this entire experience, but I was also determined to soldier through it.
As the movie started I realized I was completely right. It was just as miserable and difficult to watch as I had anticipated. Not only do we see weak, emaciated elderly people suffering as they cling to their last grasp of life, but we also get to endure the excruciating mental pain of the doctors and family members who have to go through this process with them. I wanted to shut it off, not think about it, and turn on something light and happy to cleanse myself of the despair I subjected myself to. But that’s not life. People die, and it’s hard, but it’s something that must be dealt with. Reminding myself of this, I continued on, I had to get through this.
Without realizing it, my attitudes suddenly started to shift. I no longer was wallowing in displeasure of the situation. I was enveloped, not becoming numb to the circumstance, but rather accepting it for what it was and becoming enamored with the people who had to care for these dying people. It’s this shift that is important in realizing what director Frederick Wiseman was trying to accomplish, and why this film is the length it is.
By inundating us with case after case, we begin to understand what the doctors go through. What we go through as the audience is similar to what the families of the patients go through. At first I didn’t want to watch the movie, I wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening, just as family members come into the situation. Gradually I began to accept what was happening and started listening to what the doctors were saying, and understanding that keeping people alive on machines is not really living.
At first I saw the doctors pushing for patients to come off life support as economic or space related, wanting to get rid of the person who had little chance of surviving even if they did start to improve. We’re shown time after time that this is not the case. The doctors care about the patients, and because they care they don’t want them to suffer to no end. As case by case goes by, I started understanding this, and getting as frustrated as the doctors when the families wouldn’t listen and continued to push for more evasive measures to be taken without seeing the bigger picture.
The achievement of transformation by Wiseman is nothing short of genius. He puts us right into the thick of the ICU without holding our hand or giving us any comfort. The film is shot stoically, unflinchingly, in black and white, the glow of the florescent lights and the hums and beeps of the machines creating a near intolerable climate of bleakness. We see countless patients, each with a condition as dire as the next. Each one has a family who loves them, and wants them to live just one more week. It is heartbreaking and exhausting, but its what the doctors and nurses go through everyday, and how they can take a step back from the situation and know how to handle the situation.
The choice to take someone off life support is essentially to kill them, at least using the strict definition of life. It’s not a choice anyone wants to make. To either end someone’s life or to keep them ‘alive’ and suffering. It’s not easy for a doctor to make that choice, but it’s easier than forcing a loved one to make it. Unfortunately they are the ones that have to make it. It is the doctor’s job to console and educate the families to make the right choice and be comfortable with their decision. It’s this skill which is most admirable, and most difficult and draining. In the end we’re lucky to only have to experience this for six hours. Doctors at the hospital in the documentary get one-month shifts. Nurses spend everyday, all year, there. I have no idea how they do it.
I can’t say I loved watching this documentary, and certainly never want to watch it again. But I’m in awe in how effective it was. It is a very difficult watch to say the least, but most times you have to challenge yourself to gain anything worthwhile. I can’t imagine watching this film and not being changed. I don’t know of a higher praise for a documentary than this.
Rating: 4/5
Sunday, July 24, 2011 at 12:00PM 
