Edge Of Life Review – Can Understanding Death Help Us Understand How To Live?

People often talk different ways to live: a caller fare here, a behavioural alteration there, possibly immoderate added belief magnitude to thief 1 done nan maelstrom of existence. But what astir caller ways to die? The latest movie from multi-hyphenate creator Lynette Wallworth – whose eclectic oeuvre includes documentaries, video installations and virtual-reality productions – attempts a difficult task: linking nan reality of decease to nan thought of caller possibilities, possibly moreover caller beginnings. Not successful position of an afterlife: nan halfway thought is much astir really improving nan process of dying mightiness besides amended really we live.

Edge of Life explores nan aesculapian usage of psychedelics successful palliative attraction – peculiarly psilocybin, a psychoactive compound recovered successful magic mushrooms. Research into psychedelics successful psychology and psychiatry has surged successful caller years, and nan movie highlights 1 mini portion of this: an Australian-first objective trial conducted astatine Melbourne’s St Vincent’s infirmary by Dr Justin Dwyer and Dr Margaret Ross, who characteristic prominently.

Early successful nan tally time, Dwyer counters nan communal presumption that his occupation must beryllium depressing: successful fact, he says, “it’s nan astir life-affirming situation I’ve ever worked in, because it’s each astir living”. He notes that he and Ross administer medicine that chiefly makes group consciousness “more sleepy and much quiet”, alternatively than addressing their underlying fears aliases uncertainties. He went to schoolhouse for 20 years, he says, and “learned thing astir really to die”.

Dr Justin Dwyer pinch Muka Yawanawa, a shaman whose position is threaded done nan film. Photograph: Narelle Portanier

This is partially what drew nan brace first to psilocybin, and past to conversations pinch Amazonian and Maya shamans, who’ve utilized psychedelics successful taste practices for centuries. After we travel nan journeys of respective proceedings participants, including Flavia and Ros, identified only by their first names, Dwyer and Ross determine they should besides person a psychedelic acquisition to pass their work. They return Wallworth up connected an connection to recreation to nan Amazon and portion ayahuasca, guided by Muka Yawanawa, a shaman of nan Yawanawá group – a organization Wallworth antecedently collaborated pinch successful her VR documentary Awavena.

The Yawanawá position is threaded passim nan film, which opens pinch visions of nan camera drifting on nan Amazon’s Gregório River past into nan sky, accompanied by a voiceover from Yawanawa, reflecting connected ancient stories and prophecies. Wallworth is drawn to bodies of h2o – possibly nan astir potent images of cleansing and renewal – and weaves successful immoderate beautiful artistic flourishes. I loved a partially animated, portion live-action image of a female opinionated connected a stone astatine nan ocean’s edge, hands outstretched, a painted character shimmering connected nan horizon, pulsing pinch bursts of colour, arsenic if powered by an otherworldly current.

Several of nan subjects – including Dwyer, Ros, and Dr Chris Kerr, who runs New York’s Buffalo hospice palliative attraction – are grounded, learned professionals, not nan benignant of group 1 associates pinch airy mystics. This helps dispel immoderate consciousness that nan movie has its caput successful nan clouds. At 1 constituent Dwyer notes that he’s ne'er been a remotely belief person; astatine another, Kerr mentions his “natural discomfort” pinch “the woo-woo”. He besides observes that ideas astir dying look crossed almost each culture, from nan Bible to Plato and various indigenous traditions.

I would’ve liked to study much astir really different cultures usage psychedelics to thief group understand decease and dying, aliases simply much approaches to nan subject. But Wallworth already has galore elements to equilibrium and various group tugging astatine nan communicative from different directions – including, of course, nan proceedings participants, whose journeys are champion near for them to stock successful their ain words.

Wallworth acknowledges nan strangeness of a taxable this cosmopolitan and yet successful galore ways seldom discussed successful position of really we mightiness improve, enrich and turn from it. At nan aforesaid clip nan movie notes that these sorts of ideas are hardly new, treating them arsenic mislaid alternatively than undiscovered knowledge. Edge of Life really is astir caller possibilities, calved astatine nan crossroads of science, ancient practice, and a renewed willingness to reconsider nan dying process – and really these insights mightiness pass nan measurement we live.

• Edge of Life is successful prime cinemas crossed Australia