Friday, April 3, 2009

Dying to Live

I received an email about this amazing-looking documentary

It's about Ben Mittleman, and also directed by Ben Mittleman, and follows his journey through what starts out as with a leaking heart valve that needs open heart surgery. An athlete an actor, Ben finds weakness of the body difficult to cope with. 

But it also snowballs into an ill mother, a lover with lung cancer, relationship difficulties, hepatitis C ... all within the course of one year.

 




2 comments:

Gail Rae said...

Wow! I don't know how I missed this post! I'm struck by what is said at the end about making a documentary: "Just turn the camera on your subject and hope he dies." Yikes! I don't think I'll be making a documentary any time soon! I hope not, at least!

Jessica Knapp said...

Isn't that a great quote!?!

I just watched the film, actually, and I should probably write up a review for the blog.

The film does a great job of showing what it's like to have a serious illness—how exhausting, frustrating, and frightening it is to be the person going through all of the tests, calling all of the doctors, not knowing what's happening with your own body. It's an amazing first-person account of walking through that. There are a lot of facets to the documentary, but that was probably the part that resonated with me the most.