11/03/2024
The very best of luck for the opening weekend in New York this Friday Film Forum
KPFK Film Club Review: MUCH ADO ABOUT DYING
The very poignant, and often humorous, MUCH ADO ABOUT DYING, is director Simon Chambers’ loving chronicle of the final years of his Uncle David Gale’s life’s journey. Chambers spent five demanding years providing care for his 83-year-old uncle, before the retired actor’s ultimate death in 2020 at the age of 88. Fortunately for the world, Chambers got a good bit of those years on film. That film provides the world with a fitting tribute to a rousing character who shows us a joyful way to “shuffle off this mortal coil.”
While that experience was ultimately life affirming and rewarding for Chambers, it was also trying, and, at times, quite harrowing. Uncle David could be endearing, mirthful, charismatic, and charming with his penchant for embracing life; he could also be eccentric, rambunctious, adamantly stubborn, and cantankerous.
In 2015, 83-year-old David called his nephew while he was in India (where Simon was making a film) and told him to come back to London, because, “I think I may be dying.”
While not actually on death’s door, David’s life was truly a dangerous mess. He was clearly in need of caretaking. The old eccentric’s home was infested with mice. He left containers of human waste about the flat. There were ominous tangled snaggles of electric wires, and electric heaters had burned so fiercely that they had caused fires, melted plastic trash bins, and cooked his thin, skeletal legs. His overabundance of treasured books were stacked throughout the house. David existed on a diet of tinned soups. Other than his nephew, a couple of neighbors, Zibby and Beata, sometimes looked in on him. David considered Simon’s two sisters, living nearby in London, as “too bossy”, and had rejected their help. At one point there had been a good-looking caregiver, but he had taken advantage of David for thousands of pounds.
The situation begged for a move to a senior home, but David adamantly refused, nor was he incompetent enough to be forced. So, Simon cleaned up as best he could, helped his uncle with health issues, and took over his finances. It was David’s idea to start filming, and Simon acquiesced because the old thespian loved attention, and had memorized parts of Shakespeare’s plays. He was also in a better mood when he was being filmed citing lines, most appropriately, from King Lear. David had a sonorous voice and really was an excellent actor.
A notice from Trinity College Oxford, gives a little bit of David Newlyn Gale’s bio. He was born in 1932 in Limpsfield, Surrey. At Trinity, he studied English, was in the Gryphon (speaking and debating) Society, and loved being one of the Trinity players and Theatre Club. The National Service found him too disorganized to be a field soldier, so he served in the Intelligence Corp in Africa. Later he graduated post-grad from Manchester University, acted regularly in repertory theaters, and eventually taught English and drama at schools such as Manchester, Dartington, Exeter, and, finally, Goldsmiths’ College in London, before he retired. David didn’t feel comfortable coming out as gay until his early 60’s, though eventually he decided that he would live by himself.
Simon’s course of caring for David often did not “run smooth.” There were plenty of arguments. Money mysteriously disappeared. Help from public service organizations was almost non-existent, despite long and frustrating attempts to get David help. A sudden catastrophe necessitated a move to another flat. For a while his two neighbors moved in with David, but Simon had to make another bold move in order to preserve David’s finances. Things then seemed very happy until, while treating one serious medical problem, doctors discovered another; this new one, however, was much more deadly, and untreatable.
One might expect that things would take a depressing turn at this point. On the contrary, this is when we hear David sing, “I believe in miracles, you sexy thing.” There are apropos bits of Shakespeare, such as “You, the audience, go that way, back into your own lives. We, the shadows, go back into our world.”
Among other bits of wisdom, David tells Simon that he feels as though the end holds a kind of bliss, not just for him, but for Simon as well. This was impactful for Simon, who had seen his uncle in dire straits, all the while discovering how few are the public resources for the aging. MUCH ADO is, in part, a film about vulnerability, for the caregiver as well as the infirm. While managing David’s trials, Simon had to put his own life on hold, taking up a part time job teaching. With this preview of old age, Simon (who is also a gay man living alone) began accumulating worries about his own future.
David, however, believed that he had “learned more about life in the last few weeks than in the rest of …life put together.” On film, he looks peaceful, and grateful for the help that he’s received, and for the friend and nephew who are there to say goodbye to him. His prescription for living still rings in the air… “When life’s good, it’s very, very good. When it’s bad, it’s horrid. You get through the bad bits, and then you get to the next good bit.” And his prescription for dying? "Live as much as you can, and carry on living until the day you die.” Regarding death itself… “It’s like going on the most wonderful holiday, without any of the bother of packing."
MUCH ADO ABOUT DYING is both beautiful and moving, a highly recommended film which illuminates a path celebrating love, life, and, yes, even the bittersweet eventuality of death.
MUCH ADO ABOUT DYING opens at NYC's Film Forum March 15 & in Los Angeles, at Laemmle's Monica Film Center, March 22!
Get more info here: https://www.firstrunfeatures.com/muchadoaboutdying.html
Enjoy the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/906463302
