First Cousin Once Removed (2012)
Filmmaker Alan Berliner documents his first cousin, the poet-translator Edwin Honig, as he succumbs to Alzheimer's.
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How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.
The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.
Talented and off-beat film-maker Alan Berliner documents the mind of his much older first cousin, the poet and translator Edwin Homing, as he slowly loses the battle against Alzheimer's.Of course, any film about that subject can't help but be touching, but Berliner goes well beyond the obvious tragedy to raise questions of; what is memory, time, family? We see and hear both the good and bad about this man, hear (and sometimes see) his poetry, hear the anger he put on his children as they were growing up, to end of not with a portrait of a disease victim, but of a man and an artist. Berliner jumps around in time, so we see Edwin in bad and good moments. In the end, this isn't a linear portrait of a man's decline, but an thoughtful and even darkly entertaining exploration of what is communication, thought, love.