ahjajam Reviews

Big Body Squad (2012– )

shaky, patronizing and disrespectful

[4/10 · 9 May 2015]

The issue of obesity is a growing problem in the UK. This documentary series shows the adjustments and improvements that have been implemented within emergency response teams in the NHS to deal with the increasing rate of obesity.

Throughout the documentary, the cost of upgrading ambulances and equipment are repeatedly stated. Whilst the economic impact on the emergency services is an issue, it seems immoral to discuss the financial costs to the services helping the obese, rather than the physical and social statistics of the obese themselves.

The camera work is almost exclusively hand-held, giving a shaky, unconfident and uneasy feel to the documentary. This is not the impression we want to be left with from a documentary about emergency services, where we want to feel we are in safe hands. When the "big body squad" have to transfer people from their homes, overly dramatic music is overlaid. This distracts from the sympathy we, as an audience, are meant to feel for the patient. The patronizing voice-over does not help this. By describing what we can clearly see, it seems unnecessary in some scenes.

Although obesity is a problem, building new ambulances for obese people does not help the problem, but supports it. The documentary instead resorts to using scare tactics and guilt tripping the obese by quoting the financial impact to the NHS and the expenses of arranging their funerals. There was a segment showing how much more it would cost to arrange a funeral for an obese person, and how undignified it could be. Surely filming the individuals in hospital was undignified enough.

Towards the end of the documentary though, there was some solace in the fact that all the individuals in the documentary who had to receive help from the "big body squad" did start a new diet. Although this may not be enough to solve the obesity problem for an individual or solve the national obesity problem overall, it is progression. Eating healthily is good for everyone, regardless of weight.

Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive (2006 TV Movie)

intimate, insightful, revealing and honest

[9/10 · 9 May 2015]

Manic depression or bipolarity has been an issue for many people for many decades; I myself suffer from Cyclothymia, a branch of bipolarity. Watching this documentary revealed how many people suffer from manic depression and the struggles they are going through, making me feel less alone in my problems.

Stephen Fry hosts this documentary, detailing his suicide attempt and subsequent diagnosis of bipolarity in 1995. Fry describes his massive highs and miserable lows and how they affected his life choices; how it is a double-edged sword, giving him the energy to be creative and the drive to be successful. He interviews various friends who have suffered or who have encountered those who have suffered from manic depression, giving intimate and revealing insights from celebrities on the real struggle they have been through.

I connected with many of the celebrities on a level I didn't think possible, with Fry and Carrie Fisher detailing how they are fighting the illness, but also the stigma associated with it. Many statistics were given in the documentary, the most harrowing of which being that two percent of the population suffer from manic depression and twenty percent of those people commit suicide. The point of these statistics was to give a mathematical basis to the prevalence of the issues discussed in the documentary. Whilst these statistics were useful, they did not distract from the emotional impact of the subject material itself.

Another difficulty revealed in the documentary was how difficult bipolarity is to diagnose and treat, with no brain test being conclusive and many treatments being subjective to each person. The subject matter is interesting and very personal to me. The obvious choices made in cinematography and the visual exposition of distressful times of those interviewed causes me to question the ethical issues in making documentaries where people are forced to recount and re - enact the times when they were at their worst. Overall, an incredibly enlightening and intimate documentary giving an in-depth look at a stigmatized issue in today's society, both heart-warming and harrowing. To me, the only slight let-down of this documentary is some of the cinematic choices made.