A Dedicated Film
Kazuo Hara's documentary about the last days of the writer Mitsuharu Inoue ("A Dedicated Life") is in many ways a cruel and perhaps savage act - using the filmmaking process as a cudgel. Not only is the camera relentless and intrusive (it goes into the operating room and records the surgery itself - including the scalpel's first, bloody, cut), the filmmaker uses his medium to indict a man, strip him of his illusions as he lies dying. Inoue is forced to confront his own untruths at a moment when he is most vulnerable.
The film is a reminder that there is nothing more worthless than a fiction writer's autobiography if all you are interested in is factual, historical "truth." A writer takes the facts of the world and weaves a story out of it. Why would she/he not do the same when writing about herself or himself? This is what writers do.
This sort of reminds me of some snippy writer who took Han Kang to task (after she was awarded the Nobel Prize) for "distorting history." Excuse me? Distorting history is almost a job requirement.