Hospital

Half a century later, the feeling is that some systems and programs have no doubt improved since 1969, but the ability and willingness of staff to show genuine care, argue with the indifferent and find solutions to institutional obstacles may all have waned. More than the patients, what's memorable are the phone calls: two by doctors fighting with welfare or complaining, and one by a nurse slyly asking another, whose superior is "breathing down her back", to just give a yes/no answer about beds.

frederick wiseman's movies would be all kinds of illegal if he made them today

A prequel of sorts to 'Welfare' with Wiseman expertly documenting a hospital (Metropolitan Hospital in New York City) as an institution of life and death. Almost without exception, the individuals in Wiseman's films fade to the background as the institution as a whole takes centre stage, but in this film the young man on a bad mescaline trip asserts his presence in such a way that he cannot fade. The film ends with a religious ceremony, something Wiseman repeats in subsequent films.

This is pretty hard to watch. An evening in a hospital full of poor people and their various troubles. A few made me laugh, like the Paul Dano lookalike who took some bad mescaline, but most of them made me really depressed. People dying, people with serious mental trouble, doctors stressed and frustrated, bad situations that you know will remain bad because the system is a failure.

Relatively underwhelming for a Frederick Wiseman. It takes a while to get to the more interesting bits, and after it does one still feels that Wiseman might not be working with enough material to edit down from. A guy who took a mescaline pill in the park and thinks he's going to die is a definite highlight.

Há 50 anos estreava no EUA. É um filme maravilhoso em termos de narrativa, mas nada tira aquele gosto amargo na boca de que os servidores da saúde estão em constante performance para a câmera, ou estou só acostumada com os médicos brasileiros que são tudo pau no cu. WEBRip no MakingOff.

"...comes as close as anybody to the MYTH of direct cinema..." http://illusionpodcast.blogspot.com/2015/03/episode-52-frederick-wisemans-vision.html