If Harvey Keitel with camera eyes doesn't creep you out, then the concept of "deathwatching", a reality show premise if there ever was one, certainly will. This prescient film certainly seems to foretell the advent of TV exploitation of personal identity, complete with a team of producers manipulating events to wring the most dramatic scenes out of its victims. You could argue that Katherine signed off on it, as all of today's reality-show contestants do, but we're not seeing the most watchable scenes as we do on a reality show, instead this film shows long, boring stretches of time, self-reflection, bickering, and routine mundane details such as sleeping in a hostel or riding on a bus, intended to convey a sense of impending doom I suppose. At one point Keitel is wracked with guilt at betraying Katherine's trust, but by that point it seems rather disingenuous and artificial. Max von Sydow is wonderful, as he is in everything he does, and here he makes the most of a small but important role as he tries to give Katherine some dignity. All in all, the film doesn't go deeply enough into the characters for me to care about any of them.
Review of Death Watch
