Sending Off (2019): Produced and
directed by Ian Thomas Ash. Starring: Dr. Kaoru Konta.
Running Time: 79 minutes.
Rating: 3.5/4
Ian Thomas Ash, an American filmmaker
living in Japan, tends to use a more minimalist, observative style of
documentary filmmaking. This is fitting; as he has been drawn time
and again to topics surrounding mortality and death, his methods mix
well with the more reflective mindset better suited to such subject
matter.
Sending Off, his latest film,
follows the day-to-day work of Dr. Konta and her colleagues, who
offer home services to elderly patients who are either too sick or
frail to move, or who for one reason or another would simply rather
pass away at home with family than in a facility. The routines for
her and for the family members of these patients are filled with
minute details of life during the final days. There are many
seemingly simple or banal things that fill the time for the dying and
those taking care of them- dressing, bathing, eating or drinking the
few things left they are able to stomach- but the physical state of
the people in question tends to make even the simplest routines slow,
complicated, and ponderous, and dealing with this requires real
dedication.
Dr. Konta perfectly encapsulates the
sort of patient empathy needed to handle this sort of work. She is
gentle, careful, and extremely generous with patients, always trying
to find things to make them laugh or smile. Her staff emulate this
as well, and together they do all they can to make the final days of
their patients as comfortable as possible. They talk to them about
keeping their hair nice, encourages them to drink things like Coke if
they want to, or gives them little assignments or tasks to try and
help keep their minds sharp.
The doctor herself also has her own,
unique ways to make her house trips special. She is able to notice
the small things all around her, often stopping to take pictures of
people's garden's, beautiful landscapes, or fields of flowers. These
photos, in a way, are small signs of her passing through the lives of
these families.
The biggest amount of time is spent
with a particular family whose matriarch is slowly going. We see how
the one son has taken over primary care at the end, and ocasionally
get glimpes of his own thoughts about this. We see the family come
together when the mother passes, and how the son is a bit put off by
social demands that ultimately make the burial process larger and
more complex than he'd like. I confess that I personally found a
morbid fascination in seeing what happens after a body is
cremated, though for some these images may cut a bit too close to be
comfortable viewing.
Sending Off is a concise, gentle, meditative
film about the slow passing of long, old lives. It's reflective and
thoughtful tone matches, perhaps, what most of us would wish our own
sending off to be. I certainly found myself contemplating my own end
far more than I usually do after seeing this. However, this
consideration of the end need not be something depressing. The night
may be dark, but is only filled with the terrors of our own making.
If we're so lucky, our departure can be as simple as a blossoming
cherry tree, fading into the dark with the setting sun.
-Noah Franc
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