{"id":3360,"date":"2022-05-24T10:00:02","date_gmt":"2022-05-24T09:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/?p=3360"},"modified":"2022-05-20T10:40:58","modified_gmt":"2022-05-20T09:40:58","slug":"finding-hope-in-dementia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/2022\/05\/24\/finding-hope-in-dementia\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Hope in Dementia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Film Review by Professor Robert Abrams, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vortex<\/em> is everything its title implies\u2014a terrifying eddy of misfortune from which its victims are powerless to escape. It is all about the ravages of dementia, the destruction of the human mind and its effect on those who love the person so afflicted. The film has some aspects of a documentary, inspired by the death of the director\u2019s mother from Alzheimer\u2019s disease and his recognition of the near-universality of this condition in families like his own (the dedication is to \u201call those whose brains will decompose before their hearts\u201d).[1]<\/sup><\/a> But the film is primarily fictional, a story, its roles played by actors who portray an Alzheimer\u2019s patient, her husband and her son. Shot in Paris during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in the winter of 2020-2021, it was partly for the health of the film crew that the camera ventured only rarely from the dark, cluttered rooms of the couple\u2019s apartment; but the stifling, oppressive atmosphere thus created became a fitting stage for an unfolding tragedy.<\/p>\n

The story itself is filled with sadly ironic elements. The woman with Alzheimer\u2019s disease [Fran\u03dboise Lebrun], whose name, like that of her husband, is rarely used, is a former psychiatrist. Her medical license has no doubt expired but she still prescribes antipsychotic medications in inappropriately high doses for her husband and herself. Her husband [Dario Argento] is an academic working on a vaguely conceived book on film and dreams to be titled Psyche<\/em>. Although not diagnosed with dementia himself, his descriptions of his book project are imprecise and repetitive; clearly he is no longer the scholar he once had been. We also learn that he is in fragile health. A son, St\u00e9phane [Alex Lutz] does his best to advise and help, but he is in an uncertain recovery from heroin addiction and under court-ordered supervision as he attempts to be a single parent to his own young son. The greatest irony of all may be the frequently running backdrop of taped scientific and philosophical discourses on grieving and mental disorders, presumably relics of the wife\u2019s former identity. Professional expertise and Intellectual achievement obviously afford no protection from the destructive power of dementia.<\/p>\n

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