Film : Where There Is Life

The task of car­ing for his ter­mi­nal­ly ill wife Mar­garet falls square­ly on the broad shoul­ders of Stephen Lee. He would not have it any oth­er way. Welling­ton film mak­er Gwen Isaac’s obser­va­tion­al doc­u­men­tary was shot over the four years fol­low­ing East­bourne woman Margaret’s diag­no­sis with motor neu­ron dis­ease. We watch as the focus of the small fam­i­ly shifts from rais­ing a young daugh­ter to pro­vid­ing pal­lia­tive care to the wife and moth­er. It’s a bit­ter, los­ing bat­tle in which Mar­garet fierce­ly asserts the iden­ti­ty her fail­ing body denies her, while her care­givers increas­ing­ly endure the injus­tice of being per­ceived by their patient as the disease’s enablers.

Stephen also has to earn a liv­ing and take care of Imo­gen, aged ten at the time of diag­no­sis. Observ­ing the child’s self-pre­serv­ing sep­a­ra­tion from the relent­less tragedy unfold­ing at the oth­er end of the house, Isaac’s film is often star­tling in its can­dour. Where There Is Life also mea­sures the sus­te­nance Mar­garet receives from her ardent Chris­t­ian faith. Stephen char­ac­teris­es his devo­tion as noth­ing more than the ful­fil­ment of his mar­riage vows. It is a view this film hon­ours with total respect.

The film was self-fund­ed, until the NZ Film Com­mis­sion grant­ed Gwen some mon­ey to fin­ish the film at Park Road Post. The film is part of the 2017 Welling­ton Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val and will screen on the 5th, 8th and 13th August. There will be screen­ings lat­er in the year through­out New Zealand — go to www.wherethereislifemovie.comto keep abreast of that.