Based on the 2013 book, which is in turn an expansion of the Pulitzer-prize winning article by Sherri Fink, Five Days at Memorial might be an important watch, but is unlikely to be an easy one. First look at Five Days at Memorial, streaming this weekend.
Five Days At Memorial, an inevitable film
At a time when so many of us still seek the escape, distraction and comfort our screens can provide, this limited series from Apple+ (due to premier August 12th) offers precious little. Instead, trailers suggest a two-pronged narrative: the first a not-quite-clear eyed examination of what happens when we choose to prioritize one form of human life over another, relegating the disabled and the critically ill to disposability. The second being a bleakly compelling ‘why-dunnit’, investigating the mistakes and assumptions which underpin any human disaster and the devastating emotional fallout: for families, and for the healthcare providers faced with impossible decisions.
Five Days at Memorial dissects a five-day period in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which left Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans without power. Before staff and critically ill patients are evacuated, amid ‘unholy conditions’ and rising tensions, doctors and nurses must decide for their patients between ‘comfort’ and a ‘long, slow death’. A range of medical perspectives come from Anna Pou (Vera Farmiga), Bryant King (Cornelius Smith Jr.), and Horace Baltz (Robert Pine), three of the doctors on duty, Susan Mulderick (Cherry Jones), the hospital’s nursing director and incident commander, as well as her team of nurses on the ground. As Mulderick notes, Katrina and her privations aren’t the worst they must face.
Teasers and bonus content feature tight close-ups of anguished faces, the heartbreak of relatives denied their loved ones’ last moments: horrifying and familiar in its echoes of peak COVID lockdowns. Then, as now, US authority figures on the ground take recourse in the trappings of their role, uniforms and protocols often proving as dangerous as an unholstered handgun. They also offer the hope of diverse and black-centred individual stories, central to any meaningful Katrina narrative.
Five Days at Memorial bears the hallmarks of a prestige drama – a certain sleekness, hitting expected plot ‘beats’ as well as a mostly respectful treatment of its sources and a cast of strong, reliable character actors. It also, inevitably, features scenes of mighty, rushing CGI waters and hideous destruction – this might, in less brisk and careful hands than Carlton Cuse and John Ridley (San Andreas and the superlative 12 Years A Slave, respectively), devolve into extreme weather porn, early indications are that it avoids such pitfalls. Memorial promises all the twists and heft of the best courtroom dramas, painful human horror as well as enough urgency on the failings of our health, legal and moral machinery to linger in the memory.
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