The Gerontologist, 2015, Vol. 55, No. 3, 497–499
doi:10.1093/geront/gnv059
On Film and Digital Media
“Fumbling About with Alzheimer’s”: One
Disease, Three Women and a Camera
Rose Capp, BSc, BA (Hons), MPCAC
Palliative and Supportive Services, Flinders University, Bedford Park, Adelaide, 5001, Australia.
E-mail: [email protected]
Video: Mum and Me (60 min)
Produced by British Broadcasting Company (BBC)
Distributed by Wellpark Productions and available at www.wellparkproductions.com/filmography/mumandme.html
There has been a modest but notable increase in the
number of fiction and nonfiction films addressing the
subject of dementia in recent decades. Many of the latter have been inspired by personal experiences with
the disease, with a number of filmmakers focusing on
maternal figures including Tony Robinson’s Me and My
Mum (2006), Yuka Sekiguchi’s Everyday is Alzheimer’s
(2012) and Sophia Turkiewicz’s Once My Mother
(2013).
Scottish documentary maker Sue Bourne’s 2008 film,
Mum and Me, fits firmly into this burgeoning nonfiction
subgenre. As Bourne tells it, she and daughter Holly spent
3 years filming their monthly visits to her mother Ethel, initially as a record of their time together during her mother’s
final years (Bourne, 2013). In the course of filming, however, the way in which Ethel’s personality changed along
with her developing Alzheimer’s disease, suggested the basis
for an intimate, affirmative family portrait—and a compellingly different take on the illness compared with the “grim
and depressing” documentaries Bourne had previously seen
(Bourne, 2014).
Although an experienced producer/director, Bourne
makes clear from the outset that she lacks many of the
technical skills required behind the camera. Early sequences
detail amusing attempts to wrestle with framing and sound
issues before the film settles in to focus on the generational
dynamics of these three women. Adopting her signature
observational style, Bourne allows the camera to roll as the
three women interact at Ethel’s Ayr nursing home, visit local
cafés and attempt a few not entirely successful overnight
outings.
As the title suggests, the relationship between Ethel and
Sue provides the central focus in Mum and Me and the latter’s voice-over and perspective structures the film. Holly’s
presence—often behind, but also at significant moments, in
front of the camera—foregrounds the significance of each
mother-child dyad, as well as the grandchild/grandparent
relationship. All are marked by a genuine warmth, affection and physical closeness, contributing significantly to the
appeal of the film.
The filmmaker’s raison d’être—stated up front in the
opening scene—was to “make a film about Alzheimer’s that
was jolly and uplifting.” Bourne achieves that to a degree,
due in large part to Ethel’s charismatic presence. Despite
her failing short-term memory and functional decline, Ethel
remains a vibrant, witty, and consistently engaging central
subject. Also, it is clear that her pithy take on the world is
infectious—a distinctive sense of humour defines all three
women and the relaxed and playful way they relate to each
other. Ethel’s memory loss and other issues of concern to
the filmmaker are often dealt with or deflected through
jokes and humour.
Equally significantly, Sue observes that while humour
has always defined the family’s way of coping with adversity, her relationship with Ethel has not always been easy.
“Four decades of endless clashes and rows” have given way
to what she describes as a “much better” relationship, one
that has perhaps mellowed them both “through age and
mum’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis.” There is a subsequent, brief
attempt to discuss past conflicts between two “strong-willed
and opinionated women” and a throwaway line that “lots
of people find their mothers difficult.” But Bourne misses an
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important opportunity to explore in more detail how and
why Ethel was “quite different” prior to her Alzheimer’s
disease and the changed nature of their mother/daughter
relationship in this new and evolving context.
What becomes the focus instead is the simplistic characterisation of the mother/daughter role reversal, with
Sue casting herself as the “mummy” caring for “my errant
child” (Ethel). The constant infantilization of Ethel, in
both language and action, is one of most problematic
aspects of Mum and Me. Although sadly a not uncommon
attitude in the formal and informal care-giving community, this fundamentally patronizing response demonstrates a lack of insight into, and respect for, the person
with dementia. Both Sue and Holly regularly subject
Ethel to questions as if interrogating a child, questions
designed to expose the extent of her short-term memory
loss. “How old are you? What did we do today?” Rather
than validating her responses and feelings, Ethel’s confusion or erroneous answers are either sternly corrected or
laughed off.
Even while recognizing that Ethel’s declining cognition means she is often unable to retain or act appropriately on information, Sue undertakes unnecessarily
blunt discussions about Ethel’s increasing incontinence,
discussions that clearly distress her mother. Ethel is
berated for the deterioration in her functional abilities (“You’re useless these days … you don’t make any
effort”), crankiness, fatigue and social withdrawal, with
little understanding demonstrated by either daughter or
granddaughter that these symptoms are clearly part of
the disease trajectory.
Rather than emphasizing and encouraging Ethel’s existing capabilities (and they are still considerable), Sue and
Holly insist on completing tasks for Ethel that she is manifestly competent to undertake herself.
The learned helplessness that results from this
approach—Bourne includes scenes of herself assisting with
her mother’s incontinence episodes, bathing and undressing—reinforces Ethel’s subordination. Although Sue
acknowledges that this “swapping roles is not easy…I have
to speak to her like a child,” both filmmaker and daughter
(at 17, Holly not unreasonably models her responses on her
mother’s approach) demonstrate little insight into how this
might in turn make Ethel feel.
It is in fact clear that despite her cognitive impairment,
Ethel understands the changed dynamics of the intergenerational relationships all too well. And while her default
position is to deal with the loss of autonomy and various
indignities of full-time care with typically acerbic good
humour, there are obvious indications that she is at times
frustrated and angered by her increasing disempowerment. Ethel reprimands Sue and Holly for talking over
The Gerontologist, 2015, Vol. 55, No. 3
her as if an absent presence and confronts Sue about the
insensitive and demeaning way in which she broached the
subject of incontinence (“It’s really quite devastating to
be told you’re a smelly old bitch”). She is resentful when
Holly rebukes her (and threatens to “get Mum”) for not
using a knife and fork to eat her meal, and at various
points is clearly irritated by the patronizing way in which
both daughter and granddaughter attempt to “manage”
her. Equally tellingly, at several key moments, Ethel looks
squarely at the camera with an unambiguously defiant
expression that says more than any words could ever
convey.
The discomfiting scenes dealing with Ethel’s personal
care also raise the serious issue of the potentially exploitative nature of the filmmaker’s relationship with her
subject. Viewers are not told whether Ethel was capable
of providing informed consent for these and other discomforting scenes—scenes that fail to protect her dignity
and sense of identity—and their inclusion is therefore
questionable.
Although Bourne’s desire to be “honest” about depicting the realities of a family coping with Alzheimer’s disease
fails to justify the scenes described previously, the film is
arguably redeemed by its equally uncompromising treatment of the other central character, the filmmaker herself.
The harrowing exchanges between Sue and Ethel that
occur in the final minutes of the film attest to the demands
on, and frustrations of, an only daughter living hundreds of
miles away from her increasingly frail and forgetful mother.
Sue’s brutally honest comments about the consequences of
Ethel’s dementia—while again revealing her disappointing
lack of insight into the disease—express a truth, however
uncomfortable, about her individual lived experience of her
mother’s illness.
This on screen veracity also extends to the disclosure
of Sue’s breast cancer diagnosis midway through the film.
Having made a unilateral decision not to disclose her diagnosis to avoid distressing Ethel, the sorrow expressed in
not being able to share this upsetting news with her mother
(“It’s hard because you want to share it with your mum…”)
amplifies the tone of anticipatory grief that underpins the
film throughout.
This undercurrent of grief—and Sue’s cognizance of the
continuing and cumulative losses that Ethel’s dementia has
imposed on all the family—puts in context the filmmaker’s
ambivalent and sometimes fraught interactions with her
mother. It is also what makes several scenes in the film—
most tellingly when Ethel is found crying in her nursing
home room—profoundly moving.
Sue admits in the latter stages of Mum and Me that
she “doesn’t understand Alzheimer’s,” and this is all too
evident from what has gone before. But the attempt to
The Gerontologist, 2015, Vol. 55, No. 3
“fumble about trying to come to terms with Alzheimer’s”
is arguably Bourne’s defining directorial objective. As she
feels her way technically and emotionally in the course of
the film, what emerges is a compellingly honest if at times
discomfiting depiction of one family’s singular experience
with dementia, aspects of which many viewers will unquestionably identify with.
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References
Bourne, S. (2013). Extended interview with Shereen Nanijiani, BBC
radio Scotland. Retrieved January 12, 2013, from http://www.
bbc.co.uk/programmes/p013mxwz
Bourne, S. (2014). Alzheimer’s research UK: defeating dementia
blog. Retrieved from http://www.dementiablog.org/author/
sue-bourne/