At first it felt gross. That he was being watched like this. That I didn't know who had consented. That I could see something I feared, out loud. That I needed to see it. That there was some...not glee...not entertainment...but some kind of fulfillment, for me. To watch someone forget until they couldn't speak language and it was unclear if they were aware that they weren't or that it was expected that they would. He says it in the beginning: he's a mirror.

This documentary isn't unaware. It isn't a stripping of dignity. Do we think people who lose their memories some whole become less dignified beings? Or is that something we take from them in our minds when we don't think they need it anymore, or understand they have it in the first place? This was a good documentary.

Talented and off-beat film-maker Alan Berliner documents the mind of his much older first cousin, the poet and translator Edwin Homing, as he slowly loses the battle against Alzheimer's.

Of course, any film about that subject can't help but be touching, but Berliner goes well beyond the obvious tragedy to raise questions of; what is memory, time, family? We see and hear both the good and bad about this man, hear (and sometimes see) his poetry, hear the anger he put on his children as they were growing up, to end of not with a portrait of a disease victim, but of a man and an artist. Berliner jumps around in time, so we see Edwin in bad and good moments. In the end, this isn't a linear portrait of a man's decline, but an thoughtful and even darkly entertaining exploration of what is communication, thought, love.