Departing
- 2016
- 1h 5m
YOUR RATING
How we deal with death and dying.How we deal with death and dying.How we deal with death and dying.
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YOUR RATING
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Featured review
A reasonably interesting documentary on the topic of death
Fairly decent but low-budget documentary that won't do too much visually even having some stock footage and stills. The filmmakers don't seem to be trying to push a particular viewpoint too hard which is always good.
Starts with going through the various things that can be done to the body after a person dies. The interesting part is the coverage of cryonics and interviewing a representative of Alcor who goes into some detail on how they do it.
Ideas about what happens after death are discussed with an atheist, a professor of philosophy who has written a book about afterlife beliefs and a Christian priest providing their viewpoints. I thought this was a fairly nice balance although much more detail could have been provided about what science has to say about this and I don't think the problem of consciousness really requires a duality of mind and body at all as the philosopher seemed to suggest.
There's also a part where assisted suicide is discussed. Here I thought the way they presented a "counterargument" was a little misguided. They were saying that a person could always change their mind even after they've already taken the medication that will cause them to die. With assisted suicide the idea is that it would be an option for people who are terminally ill with a short life expectancy and the rest of their life is going to be painful/otherwise difficult. Calling what they presented next a "counterargument" misses the mark because it was represented with someone who was depressed but still many years of life in front of him as an example. This is a very different situation.
There's also parts about hospice and what constitutes a good death, how people usually handle it etc. This part concentrated a little too much on anecdotes that I didn't really personally find credible but the documentary isn't pushing for the viewer to accept it, they've just made the choice to include these stories.
Overall I found this worth the time it took to watch and reasonably interesting even if it didn't cover any of the topics with any particular depth. I liked that it was relatively balanced and didn't really misrepresent any facts or strongly push a particular perspective as well as the consistent way it went through the various topics of discussion.
Starts with going through the various things that can be done to the body after a person dies. The interesting part is the coverage of cryonics and interviewing a representative of Alcor who goes into some detail on how they do it.
Ideas about what happens after death are discussed with an atheist, a professor of philosophy who has written a book about afterlife beliefs and a Christian priest providing their viewpoints. I thought this was a fairly nice balance although much more detail could have been provided about what science has to say about this and I don't think the problem of consciousness really requires a duality of mind and body at all as the philosopher seemed to suggest.
There's also a part where assisted suicide is discussed. Here I thought the way they presented a "counterargument" was a little misguided. They were saying that a person could always change their mind even after they've already taken the medication that will cause them to die. With assisted suicide the idea is that it would be an option for people who are terminally ill with a short life expectancy and the rest of their life is going to be painful/otherwise difficult. Calling what they presented next a "counterargument" misses the mark because it was represented with someone who was depressed but still many years of life in front of him as an example. This is a very different situation.
There's also parts about hospice and what constitutes a good death, how people usually handle it etc. This part concentrated a little too much on anecdotes that I didn't really personally find credible but the documentary isn't pushing for the viewer to accept it, they've just made the choice to include these stories.
Overall I found this worth the time it took to watch and reasonably interesting even if it didn't cover any of the topics with any particular depth. I liked that it was relatively balanced and didn't really misrepresent any facts or strongly push a particular perspective as well as the consistent way it went through the various topics of discussion.
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- wargentin
- Oct 17, 2021
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- Runtime1 hour 5 minutes
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