This is one of the most utterly depressing and difficult to watch documentaries I have ever seen. Now this isn't to say it isn't good--it's just that it is rough going watching the film and I really doubt if most viewers can stick with the entire thing even if it is only about a half hour long.
The documentary is set in a flop house in the Bowery in New York. This is a super-seedy hotel where men men lead a meager existence--almost as if it's just a place to go so you can wait to die. Most of the men are addicts or gamblers and the place is a filthy and scary mess. However, despite the grime and depressing aspects of the film, the film makers do a wonderful job of getting inside the lives of just a few of the residents. In fact, I really would have like to have seen more lives profiled despite the utterly dismal tone of much of the film. Seeing their lives and learning how they got to such a state was oddly compelling but sad. What made it particularly well done was the way this was all tied up at the end--showing the Big Onion tour group as the guide talked about this being one of the last of the Bowery "hotels" in skid row.
In some ways, I wished I'd seen this film a few weeks earlier, as I was in the Bowery just two weeks ago and may have even passed the The Sunshine. I doubt if I would have had the nerve to stop in (especially after hearing the one guy talk about the bedbugs), but seeing it from the street would have been interesting.
The documentary is set in a flop house in the Bowery in New York. This is a super-seedy hotel where men men lead a meager existence--almost as if it's just a place to go so you can wait to die. Most of the men are addicts or gamblers and the place is a filthy and scary mess. However, despite the grime and depressing aspects of the film, the film makers do a wonderful job of getting inside the lives of just a few of the residents. In fact, I really would have like to have seen more lives profiled despite the utterly dismal tone of much of the film. Seeing their lives and learning how they got to such a state was oddly compelling but sad. What made it particularly well done was the way this was all tied up at the end--showing the Big Onion tour group as the guide talked about this being one of the last of the Bowery "hotels" in skid row.
In some ways, I wished I'd seen this film a few weeks earlier, as I was in the Bowery just two weeks ago and may have even passed the The Sunshine. I doubt if I would have had the nerve to stop in (especially after hearing the one guy talk about the bedbugs), but seeing it from the street would have been interesting.