TORONTO -- In a documentary that follows terminally ill people to their literal dying breath, a shared expression stands out -- eyes open, mouth shaped in an Edvard Munchian "O."

It was the look my father had at the moment of his death. It seemed to me a look of surprise and awe.

"We always do that, we project all the time," says Allan King, the acclaimed verite documentarian whose film Dying At Grace intimately follows the last days of five palliative care patients at Toronto's Grace Hospital. "What people put into the film is very much theirs. It's not an essay or a narrative form, but it is a drama."

Considering that each of us has seen many thousands of fake deaths in our lives (courtesy of Hollywood), it's shocking and fascinating to see people die the way it really happens, all over the world every day.

Dying At Grace is a peek into a secret place. In our society, death is not to be seen or talked about.

"People hang on to the fantasy that they'll live forever for a very long time, according to my personal research," King says dryly. That extends to the filmmaker himself, who is in his 70s. "I was talking to a psychoanalyst I know very well, and I began a sentence with, 'If I die...' And he said, 'Allan, it's not if, it's when.' "

And so it goes, even at death's door. "You can't get into a palliative care ward unless you're terminal. But many who come in, though they know it's a ward for terminal cases, on some level they expect to walk out."

There's one particularly cruel case of dashed hopes among the five who agreed to take part -- Carmela Nardone, Joyce Bone, Rick Pollard, Eda Simac and Lloyd Greenway. All but Greenway and Nardone are introduced while still possessing a degree of vibrancy and even humour. But Simac begins to show signs of remission from her liver cancer and for some time entertains the notion of leaving and moving into her own apartment.

"I met her in August (2002). We didn't start filming until November and she didn't die until March. Her oncologist said she hadn't seen a case like hers in years and the disease in that case had been stopped in its tracks."

Perhaps the most dramatic case was Rick, an ex-biker with a violent past, dying of lung cancer. "He'd been having a recurrence of childhood images," King says. "He'd had a terrible childhood with beatings. He kept trying to get out of hospital, he tried to break a window, he had knives, he was very close to getting put in a straitjacket, and then something shifted for him.

"He died the most peacefully of all of them, after having the most violent and troubled life."

Nearly all the patients approached agreed to be filmed -- feeling their deaths would provide useful insight to the living -- but in some cases, the families said no, as did a few of the nurses."

King was affected by the experience (as were cameraman Peter Walker and soundman Jason Milligan, who had the most intimate relationship with the subjects). "I think about dying and I don't find it distressing anymore -- and I haven't for quite a while."

"It's an enormously demanding film, but it's very rewarding. Virtually no one has seen it and said they were depressed. A few said they were terrified, but everybody said it stayed with them for days."


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