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 In all the Oscar buzz this year, I’m afraid, the compelling drama, “At Night,” will get lost in all the glitzy glamour of more well-known movies. But “At Night”—a film, not a movie—is up for an Oscar for the best live action short. I am singing its praises loudly.
I saw “At Night” last night with two friends, and I, as a cancer survivor, felt immediately drawn—mesmerized, if you will—by the three women 18 to 20 who share their problems while spending the Christmas and New Year’s holidays in a hospital cancer ward. But they were different from me in one respect: their cancers are terminal.
In one night, my friends and I saw all five films nominated for an Oscar for best live action. One friend—a man—loved “At Night,” too, but his wife favored “Tanghi Argentini” about a man who must learn to tango in two weeks to impress his online girlfriend who he plans to meet soon. Annie, I love ya to death, but I was particularly engrossed with the pathos of “At Night,” a 45-minute Danish film with English subtitles, a harrowingly beautiful, but depressing, film that chronicles the bonds that cancer patients form.
I can attest that these bonds last a long time after you get out of the hospital and get on with the rest of your life.
In the film, the three women have some pretty serious problems, in addition to their terminal illnesses. The fear and self-reproach in their eyes and on their faces burst from the movie screen from the stark, sterile setting of their hospital rooms.
At the crescendo, their fears spill out during a long confessional night, as one of the women, confined to her bed and with oxygen tubes up both nostrils, leads a short champagne and streamer party that dissolves quickly into introspection, honesty and candidness.
One of the women, Stephanie, hasn’t spoken to her parents in five years. “They don’t even know I’m sick,” she said. But later, Stephanie finds a note tucked into her journal. One of the other women had written it. "Nobody should die alone," the woman said, in the note to Stephanie. "You shouldn't die alone either." Finding a haven
What I enjoyed most about the movie was that through the problems, the women find a haven in each other’s company, and they cling to that special relationship as if it would save their lives. Isn’t that the way it is with cancer survivors? Don’t we find a “haven” in each other’s company? Aren’t we linked to people the second they tell us that they, too, are cancer survivors? Perfect strangers before, but fellow members of the Cancer Survivors Club. Like I said in a previous blog, our memberships in this exclusive club bind us together forever, even if we talk only in Internet chat rooms and via e-mails. For example, when one of my best friends, Karen, from Rock Hill, S.C., e-mailed me some months ago that she had breast cancer, I reached out from halfway across the country to establish an even more unbreakable bond with her.
If you are a cancer survivor, hunt down Christian E. Christiansen's and Louise Vesth's “At Night.” It won’t be easy to find, especially if you lived in smaller communities. However, if you can’t take a very emotional movie about cancer, then skip this one and see “Tanghi Argentini” instead.
I think, however, that you’ll be as drawn to the three woman and their plights. Although my cancer was nowhere near terminal, the three characters were my fellow club members - and thus bonded soul mates.
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