Film Review: Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders

Title:              Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders
Director:              Mark Hopkins
Producer:            Erika Bertin, Molly Connors, Geralyn Dreyfous, Mark Harris, Sarah Johnson,
                                 Christopher Woodrow (Exec)
                                 Naisola Grimwood, Daniel Holton-Roth, Mark Hopkins
                                 Chris Cooper, Louis Spiegler (Co)
Cinema:                Sebastian Ischer
Editor:                   Bob Eisenhardt, A.C.E., Sebastian Ischer, Douglas Rossini
Music:                   Bruno Coulais
Year:                      2008 (113 minutes)

Synopsis: In the war-zones of Liberia and Congo, four volunteers with Doctors Without Borders struggle to provide emergency medical care under extreme conditions. With different levels of experience, each volunteer must find his own way to face the challenges, the tough choice, and the limits of their idealism. Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders is a window into the seldom portrayed and less than glamorous side of humanitarian aid work. It explores a world that is challenging, complex, and fraught with dilemmas – the struggles, both internal and external, that aid workers face when working in war zones and other difficult contexts.

Review: It sounded interesting. Follow four doctors who volunteer with Doctors Without Borders as they struggle to provide medical care in some of the poorest, most remote places on Earth. Perhaps the stories were interesting, but director Mark Hopkins made the characters in the film so unlikeable, I lost interest in the story before the end of the film.

What I thought I’d see when I sat down to watch Living in Emergency was doctors rising above adversity to treat the sick and injured. I thought the doctors would show great character and integrity. I expected to see near heroic people doing remarkable things in nearly impossible situations, while all the while keeping their cool and their dignity. Of course, that’s not what happened.

What the film depicted was doctors who were in over their heads and generally acting with a surprising lack of character. Of course things are difficult. Did these doctors not know that treating patients in the war-zones of Liberia and Congo would be difficult before they signed on with Doctors Without Borders? I expected them to show character despite their circumstances, not lack character because of their circumstances.

I wanted to like the characters. They are doctors who are volunteering to do a thankless job in horrible conditions. They could avoid the hardships and continue to practice medicine in their safe and sterile clinics back home, but instead they volunteer to treat the sick in poor and often dangerous areaas of the world. Unfortunately, the doctors portrayed are so unlikeable, it completely detracts from the work they are doing. The doctors are portrayed as spoiled malcontents who constantly medicate themselves with cigarettes and alcohol. There are seemingly more scenes where the doctors are drunk or soothing their tortured souls with a smoke than there are of them treating patients.

Fans of the film will say that the scenes in the film may be ugly, but they are real. That may be true, but if all there is to the story is ugliness, then it’s not a film I want to see.

(2.0 out of 5.0)