KATE TAYLOR MOVIE REVIEW
Where is Nancy? navigates the tragedy of one family, amplified to represent countless other families just like them, who lose a loved on to diseases of the mind. We follow Nancy’s husband, Kirk, and her family and friends in their two year search for Nancy, a beautiful, brilliant woman whose Alzheimer’s diagnosis rocked this family. Nancy disappeared from from an LA museum in October 2016, wandering away from her family in a state of probable confusion and disorientation. Dadalt’s documentary follows that search, interspersed with footage and photographs of Nancy as her family would want to remember her. It makes for incredibly powerful viewing. Dadalt’s direction reminds you of how hopeless this search would feel with these overwhelming landscape and aerial shots of downtown Los Angeles, and then cutting to Kirk, seeking to scan a city housing millions of individuals for his one special person whose cognition is impaired due to age. The way that Dadalt presents Nancy’s story makes you feel the tragedy of her illness, and her disappearance that much more keenly. Her family and friends describe her so vividly as a beautiful, intelligent, kind and active woman, which makes her deterioration at the onset of her Alzheimer’s that much more tragic for them. They describe her fading away into this illness, and then all of a sudden this beautiful life is paused with her disappearance.
Dadalt tells a very human horror story, of ageing out of human compassion, of falling between the cracks within society, and of a health and welfare system straining under the weight of all of these lost souls. Where is Nancy? challenges us to consider what life is like now for the older members of our society when their health detoriates and what it will be like as our population becomes older and older, and these issues present themselves more and more frequently. He touches too upon the listlessness of modern LA, briefly visiting Skid Row and observing the growing community of men, women and children who simply aren’t getting the care and support that they need, and that can be provided to them if these services had the manpower and the funding to provide for them. Nancy’s legacy is so moving and such a life changing development for families caring for the elderly and those with autism who are prone to wandering and disorientation. I hope that this breakthrough that has changed and saved so many lives, and protected so many families, provides Nancy’s family with some comfort in what will continue to be a painful period of their lives. It is such an affecting story, and Dadalt handles this so sensitively to allow Nancy’s story and her family’s experiences speak for themselves. That sensitivity is required for a story so moving, and so devastatingly human. Where is Nancy? is quietly beautiful, and tragic, highlighting the cracks in our society and the wonderful people who can become lost in them, but it has an overwhelmingly hopeful message, that great things can arise from great loss, and that communities can drive and effect change when inspired to do so. This is Nancy’s legacy.
By Kate Taylor
To read the publication katereviewfilms
