Movie Review: Hulu´s Suncoast Puts A Light On Death
Growing up in a spiritual family, I was taught death is just the loss of a body. It was like a warning of sorts; if you think dying makes life better… it doesn’t! In perspective it was a darkly positive note but also touched upon a real truth to the human experience: move on, move forward…. what is done is done! For Doris and her mom, that would be a great piece of advice, if it did not mean euthanizing her brother.
Nico Parker plays Doris, who might as well be the daughter of Keanu Reeves or Paul Rudd. She is so sweet, amiable, and radiates a snarky wisdom and real tenderness. Immediately, you feel for her because she is a good kid going through a nightmare. First, her beloved brother has been dying for a few years in a catatonic state and emanates heart of this film: what is the point of living when you are not alive? Bills rack up, time is wasted, and any potential relationship stays stuck in potential because Doris and Laura Linney´s Kristine are simply watching Max (Cree Kawa) waste away until he passes away. Moreover, Kristine eviscerates her daughter with a level of verbal abuse that would make anyone want to start a gofundme for Doris´ mental health. For being a movie clocked at nearly 2 hours, you can feel the excruciating mundane and existential depression of watching someone you love die slowly, quietly, and, in some ways, kill your social life with them. Sure, that may sound selfish…. but it is also not!
I remember watching Rita Moreno´s documentary and she discusses the relief she felt with her husband’s death, which to some may sound horrible. To her, he went from a good, but dominating man into a sickness that turned his sweet, but prickly personality into harsh, even draining. Often, there is an assumption that sick people are automatic saints and that their illness should not impact you emotionally, no matter how long. Yet, Suncoast gives compassion to families that have been through the wringer via a member’s illness. You understand why Doris and her mom put him in a hospice, one that is being protested by for its stance on euthanasia by Woody Harrelson´s Paul.
Harrelson makes Paul the epitome of protestors that you wonder if they are not just good people that are bored: picking up causes because they cannot pick up themselves. He strikes a friendship with Doris that opens his eyes on how he fights for and clings on to the meaning of life; protesting before as if there are evil families that just want to end some of there members for no reason, which… there are…. but I like to think those are only extremely wealth families fighting over wealth. Yet, I digress. Written and directed by Laura Chinn, I think the empathy and magic of Suncoast, out on Hulu, is that its shows a point we, often, hammer without elaborating: we do not know how others live. We do not walk in their shoes to understand the emotional and material strides they have or need to make to finally get some comfort in their life.
