An unrelenting and brutally real documentary about death
Most films I rate 4/5 or higher I'd gladly watch again. This, however, is not one of them. It's just unrelentingly brutal in its honesty, with no narration, music, flashbacks, dramatisations, animation... no techniques of any kind you'd find in other documentaries to spice things up and make things more "fun".
That's not to say it's boring exactly. The patients who are dying all have interesting interviews, and seeing their health decline to the point of death - while miserable - is something I haven't really seen depicted before, nor experienced personally, as relatives of mine have either died on the other side of the country, at a very old age and relatively peacefully, or quite suddenly, to the point where there wasn't any deteriorating health to witness.
But while it's engaging, it's also slow and repetitive and not entertaining, but I figured that's intentional. There's an inevitability over the whole proceedings. There's not really meant to be any intrigue or suspense. You get exactly what you expect out of a documentary with this premise, and it's as terrifying and sad as expected.
It earns its long runtime, despite being a touch watch. And the editing is very effective, often being very subtle, but doing a good job at cycling through the five patients and depicting passages of time clearly passing by.
I can't say I recommend this. But it does exactly what it wants to, and if it seems interesting or worthwhile to you, it could be worth a watch, and it can give you as a viewer a true insight into a process that will happen to us all.
But as a warning, there are things you'll see and hear in this that you might never forget. From this day forth until my last, I'll never forget the horrifying sounds of a death rattle, and the audio of which in this documentary disturbed me more than anything else I've seen in a film during 2021 so far.
That's not to say it's boring exactly. The patients who are dying all have interesting interviews, and seeing their health decline to the point of death - while miserable - is something I haven't really seen depicted before, nor experienced personally, as relatives of mine have either died on the other side of the country, at a very old age and relatively peacefully, or quite suddenly, to the point where there wasn't any deteriorating health to witness.
But while it's engaging, it's also slow and repetitive and not entertaining, but I figured that's intentional. There's an inevitability over the whole proceedings. There's not really meant to be any intrigue or suspense. You get exactly what you expect out of a documentary with this premise, and it's as terrifying and sad as expected.
It earns its long runtime, despite being a touch watch. And the editing is very effective, often being very subtle, but doing a good job at cycling through the five patients and depicting passages of time clearly passing by.
I can't say I recommend this. But it does exactly what it wants to, and if it seems interesting or worthwhile to you, it could be worth a watch, and it can give you as a viewer a true insight into a process that will happen to us all.
But as a warning, there are things you'll see and hear in this that you might never forget. From this day forth until my last, I'll never forget the horrifying sounds of a death rattle, and the audio of which in this documentary disturbed me more than anything else I've seen in a film during 2021 so far.
- Jeremy_Urquhart
- Mar 23, 2021