FILM SCREENINGS

Near Death

1989. USA. Directed by Frederick Wiseman. For six unforgettable, inexorable hours in the Intensive Care Unit at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital, Wiseman follows terminally ill patients, their families, and their caregivers—doctors, nurses, hospital attendants, and religious advisers—as they struggle to make that most agonizing of decisions: whether to continue life-sustaining treatment. Without sentiment or false hope, but with a tender understanding of human resilience and fragility, Wiseman reflects on the medical, ethical, legal, philosophical, spiritual, technological, economic, psychological, and even linguistic dilemmas involved in ministering to the dying. 248 min.