Letting Go: A Hospice Journey

By CAROLE HORST

Letting Go: A Hospice Journey (Mon. (18), 10:15-11:45 p.m., HBO) Filmed by HBO and Maysles Films Inc. Executive producer, Sheila Nevins; producer, Susan Froemke; co-producer, Douglas Graves; directors, Froemke, Deborah Dickson, Albert Maysles.
 

The filmmakers -- Susan Froemke, Deborah Dickson and Albert Maysles -- use the camera as the narrator, giving the subjects the freedom to tell their stories.

Maysles pioneered this technique in earlier works such as "Gimme Shelter" and "Christo's Valley Curtain."

What emerges is at times hard to watch. Michael Merseal Jr. is an 8-year-old boy who was born with an incurable brain disease.

Of the three subjects here, Michael receives the most in-depth treatment, perhaps because the filmmakers are dealing with a child, but also because the members of his blue-collar family -- an extraordinary single dad and sister Krystale, about 10 -- are so open with their feelings.

"Letting Go" also captures the caring hospice workers who aid the Merseal family -- making for poignant and compelling TV.

Pace slackens in the middle, and the filmmakers stick in a short aside with a hospice patient that seems stagy and pointless.

Some expository dialogue appears manufactured for the camera.

But "Letting Go" finds little gems of pure truth -- the look in a mother's eyes, the sorrow of a son, the tears of a physician, the eulogy at Michael's funeral -- that touch the heart.

Tech credits are excellent.

Camera, Maysles; editor, Dickson; sound, L. Mark Sorre; music, Mader. Letting Go" documents death: the death of a child, the death of a spitfire of a woman, the death of a once-hearty man. But it also illustrates the strength of the individuals who face death and of those left to deal with life -- the families, doctors and, especially, the compassionate hospice workers who care for the terminally ill patients featured in this sometimes heart-wrenching, extremely earnest but slowly paced doc. HBO plans to distribute to educators, church groups and hospice orgs.