Maria is a short (19
minutes) documentary made by Claudiu Mitcu, shot on his
smartphone. Maria is an old woman dying
at home, watched over by female family and friends who try to make her
comfortable. When they are not doing
that they are chatting to each other in the easy manner people who have known
each other a long time have. They talk
about Maria as if she were already dead, eulogising her accomplishments and
discussing funeral arrangements. This
might seem astonishingly insensitive, but these are tough women and their
compassion is of a practical and unsentimental kind.
Maria is conscious but does
not seem distressed by what she hears; it is probably similar to conversations
she has had herself while nursing dying relatives. Mitcu sits
unobtrusively in the corner filming, and the behaviour of the women is totally
natural. There is nothing prurient or
intrusive as the film feels like a respectful act of love. We do not follow Maria to the point of death,
in fact the film breaks off at an arbitrary point mid-conversation, but that is
like life: we enter and leave at arbitrary points, and it goes on without us.
The talk turns to personal
matters and one of the ladies worries about who will look after her in old age the
way she looks after her parents. Tines
are changing; the participants are enacting an age-old ritual, but in some
societies it has become far less common than it used to be. With sophisticated technology increasingly prevalent
as we reach the end of our lives we are in danger of losing the human touch
that connects us to each other. Maria is
fortunate. This is how people should die
whenever possible, not in a hospital ward but in your own bed, surrounded by
those you love, though perhaps not necessarily such chatty ones as these.
Source: YouTube/Cinepub
