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film reel image

Saturday, October 26, 2024

Take Care of Maya 2023 * * * Stars

CARE LADEN

"Our family was falling apart". Those are words you never wanna hear, especially when said family member can't walk without a total pang effect. 

Anyway most documentaries show archive footage from an optical standpoint. 2023's Take Care of Maya, well it concentrates on what you don't see, through audio recordings of phone conversations and inmost doctor visits. And uh, the pic doesn't go back too far, just various moments from early 2015 to late 2016. "But they didn't listen". That refers to Maya Kowalski and her devastating illness.

Obviously based on true events (you can't stage this swipe), Take Care of Maya is about 10-year-old Maya and how a trip to the emergency room forced the hospital workers to believe she was becoming a victim of child abuse. Kowalski gets taken from her parents by social services, her mom eventually commits suicide, and she still seems to show signs of (CRPS). That's complex regional pain syndrome, which means swelling, limited range of motion, and/or partial paralysis of virtually all body parts.

Dysautonomic disorders and safe homes aside, Take Care of Maya is directed by Henry Roosevelt in his fifth feature. Distributed by Netflix, "Maya" has Roosevelt fashioning his docu as a downer but a necessary downer, exposing our haphazard medical system and its proverbial coldness as a veritable cry for help. Featuring a sterile and rather numbing look (no pun intended), Take Care of Maya has flashbacks and zoom depositions and doting fathers breaking down. There's no happy ending, no come to realize moment, and no one wins (that includes the baddies wearing those white coats and the parental units they ruined). Basically Take Care of Maya is like a modern-day Forensic Files episode on the come up, stretched out to 103 minutes that hit you like a Mack Truck. Respite "care".

Written by Jesse Burleson

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