The Waiting Room Review

I love documentaries. Four years ago I took a documentary class at the University of Manitoba, where I met and subsequently "wooed" my girlfriend, and now we continue to watch docs together as it's one of our main common interests. Sometimes it's in theatre (last one we saw together was Searching For Sugar Man which we liked) or it's on Netflix (last one was Hungry For Change which we didn't). Suffice it to say, I have a special place in my heart for docs.


This week I went to Cinematheque and saw The Waiting Room. I had heard it was about the American health care system, but that was pretty much all I knew. In some ways it was actually about much less, and in some ways it was about way, way more.

The Waiting Room is about a "day in the life" of an emergency room in Oakland. This is the place that people go when they don't have insurance that will cover their costs at a private hospital, so they have to come here and wait for their emergency treatment. It's the safety net for the American health care system, and man is that net hanging low, and loose. While it shows an interesting glimpse into the bureaucracy side, what really makes this doc is the human side that's shown. This is as up close and personal as you can get.

The film is shot in a cinema verite style. For this film though, producer/director Peter Nicks takes this one step further than just a typical "fly on the wall." He really wants this to feel like you are literally there, waiting in the emergency room or meeting with the nurses or talking about payment. The way he does this is he has zero to-the-camera interviews. There's no point where anyone looks to the camera, or adresses the director, and breaks that fourth wall down. There are only voice overs, and they are all in the present tense. We get no references about "how crazy that day was," or  that "I had a bad ache that day." We get no title cards giving us follow ups on how the patients did later. Everything is happening right now. This technique gives everything an urgent, desperate feeling, while at the same time showing how typical it is, since it's all going to happen all over again tomorrow.

The film is all about showing over telling. There is no soft-voiced narrator telling us about the plight of any one person. We see the agitation on a woman's face as she asks why the man she came in with who is shot hasn't been seen yet. And we see the controlled, yet firm response from the nurse that they have to wait like everyone else. You can tell she's gone through this thousands of times before, not because some on-screen text tells us she's been working here for 23 years, but because we hear it in her voice, and see it on her face. It works the same way when a man who comes in with his daughter is told that she's finally getting better and they can go home: when they first came in he was anxious and stressed out, but you can hear the relief in his voice by the end. It's like he's a whole new person. We don't need any voice over for that.

The visuals get right up close to people for some shots. They really help in showing the depth of pain and anguish some people are in. Not necessarily for the ailment they've come to the emergency room for, but for the thoughts of how they are going to pay for this, like with the man who's been laying carpets all his life. Yes, he's in pain, but his real worry is when he deals with the lady over how much of a discount he's able to get for the visit.

But the most harrowing use of sounds is when a 15 year old kid comes in for a traumatic injury. This is when the emergency room looks the closest to how it tends to be portrayed on TV. The sounds of doctors providing CPR and squeezing air into the kid's lungs is just awful. It doesn't end up working, and the silence afterwards shows how even though they probably have to deal with this stuff every day, that doesn't make it any less of a human loss.

The film isn't trying to showcase a certain point of view; it's trying to portray real life stories. The only issue I had with it is the whole "one day" thing. The film never says what day this takes place on, but the film's poster says "1 community, 24 hours," so they're clearly trying to make it sound like this all happens in one day. And it is pretty obvious after watching it that there is no way this was all filmed in one day. No way. All of those stories being filmed simultaneously? Impossible. That's just not how film shoots work. Not to mention they put in many long time-lapse shots of the whole waiting room, and we never see any crew walking around. So clearly this was a carefully planned shoot that put the effort in to make sure they showcased the best stories possible.

And it's better for it. Nicks chose fantastic, gripping stories about interesting people. And it's the people that make this doc worth it. It reminds me of a French doc I saw called Babies, which was also shot in the cinema verite style. It was "one year in the life" of four newborn babies. It had no voice overs at all, but it's strength, much like The Waiting Room, was on how up close and personal these stories got. Where The Waiting Room is better is how there isn't any story that we don't care about (which can't be said for Babies).

The film also reminds me, of course, of Michael Moore's Sicko. This film was very up front about the how it viewed the differences between Canada and America's respective health care systems. As a proud Canadian, I'm very grateful to be a part of the Canadian health care system. Back in 2007 (in response to Sicko), the CEO of the University Health Network said:

Canadians spend about 55% of what Americans spend on health care and have longer life expectancy, and lower infant mortality rates. Many Americans have access to quality health care. All Canadians have access to similar care at a considerably lower cost. In "Sicko," Michael Moore has apparently exaggerated the performance of the Canadian health system -- there is no doubt that too many patients still stay in our emergency departments waiting for admission to scarce hospital beds. 

A Health Council of Canada survey showed that 42% of Canadians waited two hours of more in the emergency room, versus 29% in America. Clearly both systems have areas they can improve in, but I'm happy right where I am, with my socialized health care.