Page - 81 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/02

Film, Parable, Reciprocity | 81www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/2, 69–98 a hand, wiggling his toes and animal-like heaves and grunts between effort-full breaths. A sketch of this man emerges in his wife’s conversations with their fam- ily physician, Dr. Taylor, as someone with mental health issues and described metaphorically by his wife as a “bit of a cry baby” and “the little boy who cried wolf once too often” (ND 96). What he means to her is expressed in her search for his hand under the sheets, her anxiety about his laboured breathing and her sudden outbursts of anguish while talking to Dr. Taylor: “He’s my life. He’s my life” (ND 85), and simply, “oh, Dr. Taylor” (ND 88). The aural layering amplifies the visual layering of the film. For the most part, with the exception of Mrs. Sperazza, intense emotion is relayed with impassive facial expressions and tonal flatness. Patients near and after death look impas- sive, as do the physicians when speaking to patients’ families – Dr. Taylor speaks with a family member on the phone, looking as though he will fall asleep on the spot – all mirrored by static “faces” of computer screens and heart monitors. Several sequences involve more than a dozen people working on a patient, or a group of medical staff discussing a case during rounds or in conferences. A vari- ety of shot styles compose single, double, triple and group portraits: pans from the close-up of a physician to a patient or a family member, shots zooming in and out of close-ups, a shot/reverse-shot structure. In a spare medium sequence the viewer encounters a contrasting pace: a still camera creates a theatre effect, held for a lengthy conversation between Dr. Taylor and Mrs. Sperazza. Given her husband’s critical condition, the table’s edge seems to cut the frame with a horizontal line like a flat line on a heart monitor (fig. 3). As these shot styles sug- gest, the pacing blends slow, leisurely transitions with quick cuts, drawing the viewer into the conflicting boredom and anxiety that patients and their families face. The aural and visual cacophony in the film, interrupted by shots that evoke stillness (close-ups of faces, hands, the hospital façade, the hospital entrance), reveals a paradoxical space where parable opens up textures of more-than-rec- Fig. 3: Film still, Near Death (Frederick Wiseman, US 1989), Disc 3, 01:24:14.