Is that there are only 6 episodes each season! Too brief a time with these wonderfully drawn and acted characters! Every actor embodies their character with vivid realness, kindness, and completeness. A perfect blend of humor, drama, and reality. How long will we have to wait for the next season?? Hopefully, all remain healthy and return for season 3.
Reviews
2 Reviews
Blackbird
(I) (2019)
Reality check: Excellent, honest film about a family on verge of enormous loss
6 July 2021
Warning: Spoilers
With a few significant differences, my family lived out an almost identical storyline as the one at the core of this movie. My mother had ALS, and she chose to die by her own hand rather than completely losing control of her physiological functions, and becoming entirely dependent on others. The similarities were somewhat uncanny.. When Sam Neill's character, Paul, refers to a list of normal responses by people faced with an inevitable death due to terminal illness, he mentions several that were present for my mom, including having a potent need for control. So, to all those who claim this movie was boring, while at times overly dramatic, here's a reality check: family dynamics, and life in general, can by turn be dull, dramatic, touching, uplifting, and maddening, full of confusion, and then moments of clarity with love breaking through all the rest of it. The prospect of death being right in front of you can make extraordinarily vivid what is most important, and sometimes we still get caught in our familiar patterns and personal b.s. A very central and strong family member with ALS, for which there is no cure, may be ready to die, even if some of the family aren't ready to let them go. All of the confused and potent emotions expressed here are not just for drama's sake; all of them happen in families, whether or not someone is on the precipice of death. The performance of every actor was beautiful, genuine, and believable. Susan Sarandon was incandescent in her role. Sam Neill's character made perfect sense, and he embodied his role fully, from my perspective, in some ways taking the necessary back seat to Sarandon's performance, and to the relationship dynamics unfolding between a mother and her daughters. Not one character was disposable; all playing a part in moving the drama -- and the light moments -- forward.
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