Letting Go: A Hospice Journey

Almost unbearably intimate, this vérité documentary stands watch at the bedsides of three terminally ill patients in their final days. We meet Ralph, a 62-year-old former fireman with an inoperable brain tumor; Anna, a cancer-stricken 46-year-old mother; and Michael, a freckle-faced eight-year-old with an incurable brain disease. By the film's end, one will die as we watch.

Originally airing on HBO in 1996, Letting Go is grueling, graphic, and unshakably disturbing, but it never feels tragic. That's because filmmakers Susan Froemke and Deborah Dickson (with the help of veteran documentarian Albert Maysles) eschew morose sentimentality. Here death is a given, and the most palpable tension bubbles up from the painfully raw reactions of family members -- some estranged, others clearly in denial -- and the hospice staff who work tirelessly to "orchestrate the passing." Saying goodbye, we learn, is a monumental gesture of forgiveness. In this way, the moving Letting Go becomes more a meditation on how we live than an exposé of how we die.

-- Alicia Potter