Film
01.17.25
Dying and Pilgrim, Farewell Melissa Anderson

To go gentle—and not so gentle—into that good night: two emotionally explosive films by Michael Roemer present unsparing
portrayals of illness and death.

Reverend Bryant in Dying. Courtesy Film Forum.

Dying and Pilgrim, Farewell, directed by Michael Roemer,
Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, New York City,
January 24–30, 2025

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The films of Michael Roemer, who turned ninety-seven on New Year’s Day, have endured the curse—which is also something of a blessing—of not being fully appreciated until decades after they were made. Nothing but a Man (1964), for instance, an independent production that boasts a dynamic, fully realized African American couple (played by Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln) living in the Jim Crow South, fared miserably at the box office during its initial theatrical run, partially the result of exhibitors’ resistance to attracting Black viewers. Only in 1993, when the movie was rereleased nationally, would it be more widely recognized as a remarkable, piety-free portrayal of marriage, class, and the iniquities of racism. Similarly, it would take twenty-one years for The Plot Against Harry, Roemer’s incisive comedy about a cross section of New York Jews, to find its audience: shot in 1969 but shelved by studio executives baffled by its low-key humor, the film didn’t officially open until 1990, once more to plaudits. Roemer’s last project to date, Vengeance Is Mine (originally titled Haunted), a tumultuous drama about a woman facing up to her past, was met with mostly indifferent notices when it aired in 1984 as part of PBS’s American Playhouse. Not until its debut theatrical run in 2022 at Film Forum would it receive hosannas from critics like Wesley Morris, who hailed it in the New York Times for “feel[ing] simultaneously uninhibited and intensely private.”

Sally in Dying. Courtesy Film Forum.

Film Forum again hosts the first-ever theatrical runs of two other Roemer works that played on public television: the unflinching documentary Dying (1976), which will be shown in a new 4K restoration, and the excoriating narrative Pilgrim, Farewell (1980), which will screen in a new 35mm print. Dying is as sober and direct as its title suggests, chronicling three adults, of varying ages, in the final months of their lives (Roemer selected this trio, who all have cancer, after interviewing forty terminal patients over the course of two years). In this cinema verité triptych, title cards offer spare information, each segment bookmarked by the subject’s name—Sally, Bill, Reverend Bryant—and the date of their death. The first words spoken by middle-aged Sally, lying propped up on pillows, typify the calm acceptance of Roemer’s interviewees: “I have cancer of the brain . . . There is absolutely nothing that can be done for it. And all you have to do is wait and do what you can do when you can do.” She concludes her stoic proclamation with a slight smile. Sally possesses extraordinary equanimity, bantering with the nurses affixing her leg brace, with her physical therapist, with the EMTs who bring her back to her mother’s house. Reunited, the two women settle into snug rituals—Mom knits by Sally’s bed as the sick woman listens to classical music on the radio—while they wait for the inevitable. Reverend Bryant, the oldest of the participants, is even more sanguine than Sally, announcing, “I’m living some of the greatest moments in life . . . I’m the most happiest man in the world.” His contentment stems from the emotional succor provided by his devoted wife, Kathleen; his faith; and the delight he takes in his grandchildren, undimmed even as he appears cadaverous in his bed, too weak to turn on his side. He is barely intelligible, but we can make out these words, the last we hear him speak: “Thank you.”

Bill in Dying. Courtesy Film Forum.

Bill, the youngest of Dying’s three participants—he looks to be in his early thirties—is also the most taciturn. He is eclipsed by his spouse, Harriet, whose despair and rage serve as a stark counterpoint to the composure of those facing their imminent demise. She is prone to rapidly fluctuating emotions—cracking herself up with a private joke one second, weeping the next—and shockingly candid admissions. Essentially, she is impatient for her husband to die: “The longer that this is dragged out, the worse this is gonna be for all of us,” she protests to Bill in his hospital bed. (His nonplussed reply: “Well, whaddya want me to do?”) That “all of us” includes the couple’s two young sons; Harriet is terrified of being widowed when the boys are unruly teenagers. Better that Bill should give up the ghost now, so that she can have sufficient time to find a new husband to ease the burden of parenting adolescents. While Bill, Sally, and Reverend Bryant abide the unendurable with tremendous dignity, Harriet reminds us that the nearness of death also triggers riotous responses: ferocious derangements, wild helplessness.

Elizabeth Huddle as Kate in Pilgrim, Farewell. Courtesy Film Forum.

The making of Dying was, understandably, draining for Roemer. (Praised by Time as “the year’s most distinguished documentary,” Dying stands as the filmmaker’s lone project to receive near-universal critical approbation in its day.) But it seems Roemer could not shake what he observed. Dying’s immediate successor, Pilgrim, Farewell—which Roemer also wrote and which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 1980 before airing on American Playhouse in 1982—focuses on cancer patient Kate (Elizabeth Huddle). Thirty-nine years old, she has a few months to live. The turbulent moods evinced by Harriet in Dying are amplified tenfold in Pilgrim, Farewell; I can think of few films as emotionally chaotic. Not only is Kate explosive—constantly changing her mind, howling with pain and wrath, driven solely by base instinct—but she must also contend with an estranged college-aged daughter, Annie (Laurie Prange), who suffers from tenuous mental health and is agonizingly uncertain about the extent to which she wishes to reconcile with her mother.

Christopher Lloyd as Paul in Pilgrim, Farewell. Courtesy Film Forum.

Navigating the maelstrom are the forbearing Paul (Christopher Lloyd, the cast’s only well-known performer), Kate’s lover, and Becca (Leslie Paxton), her younger sister, who arrives from Miami for an extended stay. Paul and Kate live in a large house in Vermont; the surrounding natural splendor soothes the ill woman somewhat, as does the classical music she’s always listening to (recalling Sally in Dying). But she remains savagely unpredictable and cruel, constantly insulting her boyfriend and her sibling and demanding that they leave, only to softly plead for them to stay minutes later. (Kate’s best line: “I’m unfair. Like God.”) As for Annie, simply buying back-to-school clothes brings on a torrent of tears: “I need a sweater. What I really need is something to hold me,” she sobs.

Roemer himself once admitted of Pilgrim, Farewell and the similarly feverish Vengeance Is Mine that they “have both the strength and the limitations of deeply personal work. They are genuine, but hardly entertaining.” When I first saw Pilgrim, Farewell more than ten years ago, I found its psychic volatility barely tolerable. But, as ever with Roemer’s work, the film was waiting for me to rediscover it. In the decade-plus since my first and second viewings, I’ve come to more fully understand (and witness firsthand) how illness and grief can mentally destabilize anyone past the point of recognition. What I once thought of as histrionics now strikes me as feral, terrifying reality.

Melissa Anderson is the film editor of 4Columns and the author of a monograph on David Lynch’s Inland Empire from Fireflies Press.

To go gentle—and not so gentle—into that good night: two emotionally explosive films by Michael Roemer present unsparing portrayals of illness and death.
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