About eight years ago, my dad began to forget things. It was harmless at first, such as losing an object that he thought he had put somewhere, but then it became more worrying. He would be lost on his way home from work – a route that he had taken countless times before – and would have expired where he could no longer remember his name or where he was and what he did. As a doctor, he knew that something was not right, but other doctors failed to diagnose it as something other than typical cognitive decline. After all, he was in the 70s.
But like Covid Here and time went on, it only got worse. The whole body began to show signs of deterioration, everything from handshakes to his walk became a trap. Finally, about two years ago, a name could be added to this cruelty: Parkinson’s with Lewy Body Dementia. If this sounds familiar to some, it is because it is the same disease that caused Robin Williams to take his own life a little over a decade ago.
My father lives in a memory care facility now and cannot communicate normally or perform most functions myself, as well as regularly hallucinating, but every time I see him it is difficult not to remember the brilliant man who bred me. Not only was he gifted in medical sciences, but he was also an avid historian, an opera lover and valued citizens and good governance more than most in his generation. Try to talk to him about any of these subjects today, and one is reminded of everything that has already been lost even though he is still here and about this earth.
While my father’s story may be very different from Martin Pistorius’ depicted in Rodney AscherLatest documentary, ”Ghost boy“I still felt a connection to its depiction of the trauma ripple effect and how a large mind captured in a dysfunctional body is one of this world’s most ruthless injustice. A victim of what is now called locked syndrome, Pistorius’s life at one point had great potential. At only 10 or 11, Pistorius already worked with wires and electrodes to build his own alarm that he could use to prevent his siblings from moving with his legos. But at 12 o’clock, the whole body began to turn off and left him in a waking coma that ripped all the memories from before that time. As we will find out, the only reason why Pistorius can tell about any of this information today is both by using a computer -based speech synthesis and from details that were forwarded to him years later when he finally regained consciousness and the ability to communicate with others.
To Portray The Nuances of Pistorius ‘Experience, Ascher’s Re-Anactments Evoke Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Landmark Sci-fi miniseries “World on a wire,” Itself A Pre-Cursor for the Wachowskis’ “The Matrix,” which the Document. “An error in the matrix.” Just as the subject of Fassbinder’s paragraph struggles to decipher whether he is in real life or a simulation, we are also intended to understand the situation for Pistorius, who with 16 years, began to regain consciousness, but could not share that information in any meaningful way. By 19 years, Pistorius had become fully aware of his surroundings and began to take up conversations that others thought they had with themselves or around individuals who lacked extensive abilities.
For several years, Pistorius was stuck in this in between, his mind sharp and conscious, but his body without tools to let others know. It was times that he made attempts, such as biting his father’s stomach as he tried to hit a Finn on his back, but when he relived this experience, Pistorius shares that even those accused of his care did not always put a lot of layer in that he was a human being. A particularly worrying anecdote means that Pistorius is forced to eat his own vomit while staying at a health center. But perhaps the most worrying connection Pistorius is forced to face is his relationship with his own mother. While his father worked hard to tend to his needs, over time, Pistorius’ mother withdrew from the battle he met and instead paid her attention to her other two healthy siblings. Although she did not know he could actually understand her, his mother went even as far as telling him that he had to die and free the rest of the family from this haunting stas.
As worrying as this can be too many, for this writer it was an overly familiar scenario. How do you handle the feelings you carry for the individual trapped inside the disease? Is it wrong to give up the hope for a certain turn and wish they can be freed from this tragic existence once and for all? Although most of the story is shared directly from Pistorius when Ascher interviews him via an Errol Morris style Interrotron set, the filmmaker offers space to Pistorius’s parents as well, so that their perspective may be a little more rounded and not purely forwarded by anyone else. But their reaction to realizing that their son’s mind was still sharp sometimes they thought he had gone is sadly left out of the story, perhaps too haunting and troublesome for them to fully meet.
In the end, for as much contempt as Pistorius held for the care he was given, was the one who actually aroused his parents to the possibility of his consciousness in fact one of his caregivers, Virna van der Walt. Unlike others, Virna spoke to Pistorius as a friend and as such Pistorius could answer in kind and use his eyes to admit he was listening. Eventually Virna caught and got his parents to have him tested for augmentative and alternative communication at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. As exhibited by Picorious presence throughout film By talking main interviews, the rest of the story is quite self -explanatory, but undoubtedly remarkable. Over the next few years, Pistorius developed a new communication process and regained some of his upper body functions, which now enabled him to move with a wheelchair without the help of others.
Outside his ability to go and talk, Pistorius could actually achieve what many can define as a normal life, even get married and have a son, and to form their own company focused on web design and development. Although Ascher treats this as a happy ending, his real intention in the entire film seems to be focused on putting us through the traumatic story Pistorius underwent for many of his formative years. It would not be the first time the filmmaker found fascination for the horror that the mind and body can be causedAfter doing “room 237”, which dives into the several interpretations of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining”, as well as “The Nightmare”, who investigate those affected by sleep paralysis. But with “Ghost Boy”, Ascher combines everything he has learned when he does these previous documentaries to create an inventive recreation that urges theatrical practice, as well as cinematic composition. With the help of disabled artist Jett Harris instead of Pistorius, the subtlety is taken in his unique trip to fantastic, yet authentic insight.
Knowing the devastation as a disease like Pistorius’ can reap, not only on the individual, but for those around him, I felt particularly drawn to “Ghost Boy”, both as a stylistic exercise and as an unmatched first person story about disability. Like last year’s “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin”, winner of the Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary and the Directing Award: World Cinema Documentary at Sundance, “Ghost Boy” creates a link between the technical knowledge of its main subject and how his life’s trial. It is not always a simple clock, but one that is constantly intriguing and invested in reporting everything we may not fully understand about those who cannot communicate in traditional ways.
Rating: B+
“Ghost Boy” premiered at the Film Festival 2025 SXSW. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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