Dying at Grace (2003)

best movie i've ever seen.

Admirable film.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Like the other King docs, there is no narration, no interviews, no explanatory title cards except at the very beginning. Just the profoundly intimate documenting of people in their private moments... in this case, five terminally ill patients in palliative care at Toronto Grace Hospital. The film is, in a word, devastating. I haven't wept so much in a long time. A couple of the patients seem hopeless from the outset, the others start out fairly vibrant but gradually deteriorate into despair, resignation, and finally barely functional bodies. Although we see them at their most helpless and dependent, at the height of their suffering, the feeling aroused is not pity but heartfelt compassion for them and their loved ones. Most moving of all is Lloyd, whose brain tumor leaves him practically speechless, but the devotion of his lover is deeply affecting. A powerful, shattering piece of work.

This is a film everyone should see. Particularly if you have someone you care about who is ill and could die. I took care of my partner for 9 months in a hospice and then for 5 yrs. at home. The final days still haunt me. This would have prepared me beyond what reading, or telling me could accomplish. It was difficult to see this film as it so mirrored my own experience at the hospice and to the final days at home. The experience has shown me how terrible it is that we do not provide physician assisted suicide. Instead we put them through this process of dying and suffering through it. Plus unless you are insured, we take away everything you have so you can afford to die. This film serves as a wake up call to the reality of death.

My mother died of ovarian cancer and my brother and I took care of her for the majority of that time. What happens to all 5 souls in this movie is exactly what happened to my mom, down to the very smallest detail. There isn't a whole lot of variety to what happens. The person progresses from fairly coherent (themselves, if you will) to more and more aloof, then finally, that awful eyes-in-the-back-of-the-head and labored breathing part (the end). I'm a scientist and an observer. I know darn well what the real cause of death for all of these people (including my mother) was... it's called dehydration. There's a point when the person can't eat or drink anymore, and that's when you know they won't last another week. All that labored breathing is for oxygen that a low blood volume (dehydration) can't supply. There has to be better way than starvation. Truthfully, my mom could have done without the last 2 weeks of her life, and so too could these people. Watch this movie and live in reality, just for a moment. Take some time off from those Will Ferrell movies, you know.

This was a very moving insight the thoughts and feelings of five people during their final few days on this earth. Having very compassionate health care workers to talk to about death and the afterlife. Some moments in the documentary nearly brought me to tears. If you get the chance, watch it, but I do NOT recommend it for young children, as there are some disturbing scenes.