Film response and analysis

Nursing

Film Response

The stories that ill people often tell come out of their bodies. The body puts into action the need for fresh stories when its illness disturbs the old stories. The body, whether still diseased or recovered, is at the same time reason, theme, and tool of whatever new stories are told. These personified stories have two sides, one that is individual and the other that is public (Frank, 1997).

The personal matter of telling stories about illness is to provide a voice to the body, so that the altered body can develop into once again being familiar in these stories. At the same time that the language of the story requests to make the body recognizable, the body escapes language. The ill body is without doubt not mute, it speaks expressively in pains and symptoms, but it is incoherent. The body is often estranged, factually made odd, as it is told in stories that are prompted by a need to make it recognizable (Frank, 1997).

Away from Her tells of a love story between Fiona and her longtime husband, Grant, and how they struggle with the beginning of and acceleration of Fiona's Alzheimer's disease. Instances of articulateness and ironic observation spray Fiona's decline. The story is set in a cold winter in Canada. There are many fields of snow that serve as the background that emphasizes the harshness of Fiona's diagnosis.

Grant and Fiona were a retired couple living in rural Ontario. Fiona began to lose her memory, and it becomes obvious that she is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. All through the movie, Grant's expressions on his marriage are incorporated with his memories of his own infidelities, and manipulate his ultimate choices concerning his wife's contentment. When she senses that she is becoming a danger to herself, Fiona chooses to go and live in a nursing home. One of the polices at the nursing home was that a person could not have any guests during their first thirty days there. Cautious of this rule, Grant agreed nonetheless, at the persistence of his Fiona. While driving to the nursing home, Fiona brings up Grant's past indiscretions during the time that he was professor at a university. Despite the uncomfortable circumstances, they make love before parting.

When the thirty days was up, Grant went to visit his wife, he found that she had forgotten him, and had turned her fondness to Aubrey, a mute man in a wheelchair who had become her coping mechanism in the nursing home. While watching his wife get closer to Aubrey, Grant became a dejected onlooker when visiting his wife at the nursing home. As time went by and Fiona still did not remember him, Grant began to wonder whether Fiona's dementia was an act intended to hurt him for his past indiscretions. After a period of time, Aubrey's wife takes him out of the home because of financial difficulties. This leads Fiona to sink into a deep depression, with her physical health also deteriorating. Grant is affected by this, and goes to see Aubrey's wife in an attempt to allow Fiona to see Aubrey again. He would rather see his wife content with another man than unhappy and alone. Aubrey's wife originally refused, but the meeting led to a hesitant association between her and Grant. As time went by Grant continued to visit both Fiona and Aubrey's wife. He eventually moved out of his house and succeeded in taking Aubrey back to visit his wife. But right before he brought Aubrey into Fiona's room, Fiona remembered him and the love that she had for him. The film ends as they hug.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is an astonishing true tale of Jean-Dominique Bauby. Bauby was a thriving and compelling editor-in-chief of French Elle, who believed that he was living life to the fullest when an unexpected stroke left almost completely paralyzed. As the physical tests of Bauby's condition left him with little expectation for the future, he began to figure out how his infatuations, his affluent recollections and his newly discovered imagination could aid him to attain a life devoid of limitations.

In this movie, Bauby's tremendous life is recounted. The initial part of the movie is told from Bauby's viewpoint. The film began as Bauby was coming out of a coma that he had been in for three weeks. Following an early over positive investigation from one physician, a neurologist clarified that Bauby had locked-in syndrome, which is a tremendously uncommon condition in which a person is nearly totally physically paralyzed, but remains mentally in tact. In the beginning, the watcher mainly hears Bauby's thoughts, which are not heard by any other people, and are seen by way of his one working eye. A speech therapist along with a therapist attempt to help Bauby become as efficient as feasible. Bauby is not able to talk, but he develops a way of communicating with his speech and language therapist by blinking his left eye. She reads a list of letters in order to spell out his messages, one letter at a time.

Slowly, the movies limited viewpoint expands out, and the watcher starts to see Bauby in a different way. This includes seeing things from his past, along with his fantasies. In these visions he sees beaches, mountains, the Empress Eugenie, and a great banquet with his therapist with himself being well. It is discovered that Bauby had been the editor of the French fashion magazine Elle, and that he had already had a deal in place to write a book. He chose to go ahead with writing a book, using his deliberate and very tiring way of communicating. A woman was brought in from the publishing house in order to write down what Bauby wanted. The book gave explanation as to what was now like to be him, to be ensnared in his body, which he saw as being stuck in a diving bell not capable of communicating with those on the exterior.

The tale of Bauby's story is put next to his memories and misgivings before his stroke. During the movie we see the mother of his three children, to whom he never got married, his children, his girlfriend, his acquaintances, and his father. He comes across people from his past whose lives have some similarity to his own situation. This included one of his friends who was kidnapped in Beirut and held in solitary confinement for many years, and his own elderly father, who was shut in to his apartment, due to the fact that he was too weak to go down four flights of stairs in order to get out. Bauby ultimately finishes his memoir but dies of pneumonia ten days after it was published.

Sick people tell stories that are well-versed by a logic of accountability to the reasonable world and symbolized one method of living for the other. People tell tales not just to work through their own changing circumstances, but to furthermore direct others who will come afterwards. They look to not only supply a plan that can direct others, as everyone has to develop their own, but instead to witness the understanding of rebuilding their own plan. Storytelling seems to be a natural reaction to illness. Illness is often seen as a loss of control and storytelling is the process by which people use to regain a new sense of control.

Illness requires people to learn to think differently about their lives. Stories supply the medium for people who are living with an illness to discover by listening to themselves tell their tales, taking in others' responses, and understanding their tales being shared. Therefore, stories facilitate people who are ill to confirm what they mean to each other and who they are with respect to each other. Because stories engage at least two parties, the storyteller and the listener, they can be seen as discussions. As such, they are not stationary. Some issues that may cause the storytellers to change their tales to include the condition at hand, the relationship between the individuals, or the time frame within which the stories are told. The significant point about stories is that they are an outstanding medium through which to find out information needs about a stage of life that, to date, has not received much consideration.

Sick people are more than just sufferers of disease or patients of medication they are often seen as injured narrators. People tell tales in order to understand their anguish. As they turn their illness into a story, they often find healing. It is thought that that there are three fundamental narratives of sickness. These include restitution, chaos, and quest. Restitution narratives expect to get well again and give importance to the knowledge of cure. In chaos narratives, sickness seems to go on forever, with no relief or redeeming insights. Quest narratives are about discovering that insight as sickness is changed into a way for the sick person to develop into someone new.