Jorge Léon's film Before We Go is a truly inspiring and uplifting film about a difficult subject for many: what is left for human beings to meaningfully experience, after crossing a threshold of "no return," that is, after a medical diagnosis of their immanent demise?
Upon an invitation from a palliative care unit in Brussels, Léon created a workshop for some of its terminal patients which could possibly lift them beyond their seemingly hopeless circumstances, by exploring the theme of death through various creative means. He enlisted into the project some of the performing artists from the La Monnaie Opera House in Brussels, to work with these patients, gently coaxing out of them a performative inspirational response to their existential condition. Questions lurking under the surface, of mortality and its unknown expiration date, were perhaps secret drivers on the road to exploring the time left.
What unfolds in this striking old-world theatrical venue is a remarkable series of tableaux, in which the encounters between the patients and these performers who interact with them yield some often astonishing moments of communion: in which both parties are transported beyond limits of physicality and emotion, even of motivation — to break through into a new state of experience and existence.
In one instance, the elderly woman patient we see early on having so much trouble getting out of bed, her bodily pain transmitted respectfully by Léon's concise but compassionate mise-en-scène, shortly thereafter appears before us in an incredible pas de deux with another younger woman (a professional dancer), who leads her into an exploratory series of movements and gestures until, after ever greater degrees of abandon, the women collapse into each other with sudden joyful surprise and the new courage of human possibility.
There are many such moments in this powerful work, featuring several other patients and performers, which I will leave interested viewers to discover for themselves. Through their shared encounters, each of them seems to come to some vital and profound realization around the questions of meaning involving life and human limitation, as well as the healing and transcendent nature of art to mitigate some of our fear and vulnerability. Meanwhile, the question of how to face our death individually is one that remains hanging in the air, as it can only be answered by each of us in the most private and intimate internal circumstance of all: within the space of our souls.
Watching Léon's film immediately prompted memories of another very powerful cinematic experience I had some years ago, with Allan King's documentary set in a palliative care section (of the Grace Hospital in Toronto), called simply Dying at Grace. It followed a few individuals at different stages of physical decline, living out their last days and moments, as they received the necessary care and attention from the medical staff and occasional visitors.
Nothing prepared me for that experience — it was simply the most profound encounter that I have had (through cinematic means at least) with the reality of death. I fully experienced an identification with every person making his or her way through their last passage of life. And for those fateful two and a half hours of vigilance, I came to an extraordinary discovery: that the process of natural death was actually a peaceful one for the most part. I wanted to exit the theater during the first half hour because I thought I could not bear witness, but I am grateful that I stayed because of the gift I received from Allan King: that death could no longer make me afraid after that. If that sounds miraculous, please seek it out and see for yourself. Not only will you not regret it, you will want to share it with others.
And so, while Allan King's film seems death-affirming in the most unimaginably positive way, precisely because it paradoxically still embraces life, Jorge Léon's film is definitely life-affirming as it celebrates its participants ability to push the boundaries of death to a somewhat distant perimeter, while it fills up an immediate space that opens with human possibility and joyful transformative release of healing energy even while the question of the ultimate fateful encounter still looms unanswered in the air.
In any case, I urge you to see both films.
Upon an invitation from a palliative care unit in Brussels, Léon created a workshop for some of its terminal patients which could possibly lift them beyond their seemingly hopeless circumstances, by exploring the theme of death through various creative means. He enlisted into the project some of the performing artists from the La Monnaie Opera House in Brussels, to work with these patients, gently coaxing out of them a performative inspirational response to their existential condition. Questions lurking under the surface, of mortality and its unknown expiration date, were perhaps secret drivers on the road to exploring the time left.
What unfolds in this striking old-world theatrical venue is a remarkable series of tableaux, in which the encounters between the patients and these performers who interact with them yield some often astonishing moments of communion: in which both parties are transported beyond limits of physicality and emotion, even of motivation — to break through into a new state of experience and existence.
In one instance, the elderly woman patient we see early on having so much trouble getting out of bed, her bodily pain transmitted respectfully by Léon's concise but compassionate mise-en-scène, shortly thereafter appears before us in an incredible pas de deux with another younger woman (a professional dancer), who leads her into an exploratory series of movements and gestures until, after ever greater degrees of abandon, the women collapse into each other with sudden joyful surprise and the new courage of human possibility.
There are many such moments in this powerful work, featuring several other patients and performers, which I will leave interested viewers to discover for themselves. Through their shared encounters, each of them seems to come to some vital and profound realization around the questions of meaning involving life and human limitation, as well as the healing and transcendent nature of art to mitigate some of our fear and vulnerability. Meanwhile, the question of how to face our death individually is one that remains hanging in the air, as it can only be answered by each of us in the most private and intimate internal circumstance of all: within the space of our souls.
Watching Léon's film immediately prompted memories of another very powerful cinematic experience I had some years ago, with Allan King's documentary set in a palliative care section (of the Grace Hospital in Toronto), called simply Dying at Grace. It followed a few individuals at different stages of physical decline, living out their last days and moments, as they received the necessary care and attention from the medical staff and occasional visitors.
Nothing prepared me for that experience — it was simply the most profound encounter that I have had (through cinematic means at least) with the reality of death. I fully experienced an identification with every person making his or her way through their last passage of life. And for those fateful two and a half hours of vigilance, I came to an extraordinary discovery: that the process of natural death was actually a peaceful one for the most part. I wanted to exit the theater during the first half hour because I thought I could not bear witness, but I am grateful that I stayed because of the gift I received from Allan King: that death could no longer make me afraid after that. If that sounds miraculous, please seek it out and see for yourself. Not only will you not regret it, you will want to share it with others.
And so, while Allan King's film seems death-affirming in the most unimaginably positive way, precisely because it paradoxically still embraces life, Jorge Léon's film is definitely life-affirming as it celebrates its participants ability to push the boundaries of death to a somewhat distant perimeter, while it fills up an immediate space that opens with human possibility and joyful transformative release of healing energy even while the question of the ultimate fateful encounter still looms unanswered in the air.
In any case, I urge you to see both films.