Living in Emergency - Doctors Without Borders Review
By David Kempler
Bordering on Insanity
How can you not admire people who forsake making an extremely good living to head to the hellholes of the world in order to help those who most desperately need it? The answer is that you can't. Whether or not that makes for a good experience on film is another story.
Like most good medical dramas, "Living in Emergency" weaves together major medical problems with the people experiencing them and the overworked, sleep-deprived doctors in the middle of it all. The doctors that Mark N. Hopkins turns the cameras on are all driven by the noblest of intentions but stress envelops them, sending most of them to the showers after one or two tours of duty. Each tour is six months in length. The doctors here are stationed in the war-torn and destitute areas of Liberia and the Congo.
Nothing here is overdone, instead everything is understated. The doctors perform their duties as if they were programmed to do so. Any vestige of their original enthusiasm has long ago left them, leaving an organism that reacts to a stimulus rather than with any sort of drive to do well. Their only visible emotions bubble to the surface in moments of extreme frustration with the predicaments they find themselves in.
Eventually, all of the physicians come to the sobering realization that what they are doing is valuable to the individuals they are helping but, in the long run, has no real impact on effecting meaningful change. That is when they know they cannot go on with their mission. They can't win. They can't even make a dent.
Because of this, "Living in Emergency" is more depressing than hopeful. But if everyone gives a darn, maybe there is some hope. If you can handle constant emotional disappointment, it's worth seeing, but don't expect to feel great about things afterwards.
