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See it and weep

I “enjoyed” last night a showing at National Geographic of The Cave, a film about an underground hospital in Eastern Ghouta, outside Damascus, during the Assad regime’s five-year siege. Here is the precis from National Geographic:

Oscar nominee Feras Fayyad (“Last Men in Aleppo”) delivers an unflinching story of the Syrian war with his powerful new documentary, The Cave. For besieged civilians, hope and safety lie underground inside the subterranean hospital known as the Cave, where pediatrician and managing physician Dr. Amani Ballour and her colleagues Samaher and Dr. Alaa have claimed their right to work as equals alongside their male counterparts, doing their jobs in a way that would be unthinkable in the oppressively patriarchal culture that exists above. Following the women as they contend with daily bombardments, chronic supply shortages and the ever-present threat of chemical attacks, The Cave paints a stirring portrait of courage, resilience and female solidarity.

The documentary is excruciating. In cinema verite’ style it conveys a highly personalized account not just of the cruelty of the bombing but also of the tribulations of the hospital personnel and their patients.

This is not just war. It is war as crime. Every day brings bombardment of civilian targets, including this hospital (as well as many others). The Russian and Syrian aircraft, missile launchers, and chemical bombs pummel the area’s remaining inhabitants incessantly. Women and children are frequent victims.

The doctors and other personnel work with primitive means and what we can only assume is great skill. They are devoted beyond reason to staying and doing what they can to help. They break occasionally to watch classical music and dance performances on a cell phone, but that, food preparation, and a birthday celebration are the only apparent distractions. Otherwise they examine, advise, inject, operate, and bandage as if their own lives depend on their medical efforts, not those of anonymous neighbors.

The toll this takes is all too evident. These are ordinary people making superhuman efforts. Each has her or his own story, told in enough detail for us to understand that the pain is more than individual. Some have families who await them in safer places. All are choosing to stay and sacrifice to protect people they don’t know from the ravages of a regime they despise.

The gender dimension of the story is clear: the 30-year-old director of the underground hospital is a woman, a pediatrician. She seems a sensitive manager, but one with gigantic responsibilities entirely uncharacteristic of a woman in the patriarchal society in which she grew up. The director uses one of the patients, whom we might describe as a male chauvinist pig, to voice condescending disdain for her and her role. Most of the time though she is portrayed as doing her job in a way that the men surrounding her accept and enjoy. War dispenses with gender distinctions that make no sense given the challenges.

In the end, Eastern Ghouta falls after a chlorine attack. Hospital personnel evacuate. I was delighted to learn in the discussion afterwards that the hospital director survived, married, and now runs a charity devoted to female health care workers and female leaders in conflict zones. Even the tragedy of Syria produces good as well as evil. Feras Fayyad, whose previous film on the White Helmet rescue workers in Syria was nominated for an Oscar, merits at least that much honor again for this superb documentary.

See it and weep.