***SPOILERS*** Sad and extremely touching movie about a family facing the death of their 8 year old son Ben, Joshua Harris, an hemophiliac who contracted AIDS in a tainted blood transfusion. Ben who has less then a year to live with his parents Claire & Greg Madison, Linda Hamilton & Richard "John-Boy" Thomas, trying to make Ben's last days of life filled with enough love and understanding-the death experience-that would make him forget what's soon to take him away from them.
Not at all easy to watch but like Ben were made to understand that death isn't the end but a new beginning for those, that's all of us, who end up facing it and it's only the living that suffer in losing a loved one to it with the person that's soon to be gone being been released from the suffering that he or she is going through. By the time that death finally overtakes little Ben he as well as everyone around him have accepted his fate knowing that his suffering-From the ravages of the AIDS virus- has finally ended for him as well as themselves.
Not as dark and depressing as most films-Like "Love Story"-about a person facing death with us knowing what the end would be almost as soon as the movie opens with Ben's parents and friends of the family attending his funeral. It's in the long flashback that gets us to know the causes of Ben's death that really makes the movie so touching and able to sit through. Eevn Ben's dad Greg loses it late in the film by suffering sever depression at home and at his job as a home builder over his son Ben's fate and almost ending up in the hospital himself. It takes an extreme amount of strength and courage for Greg and his wife Claire to see the whole thing,their son Ben's impending death, through with the kindly and also suffering from depression and sleep deprivation Uncle George, Ned Beatty, a carpenter by trade constructing Ben's coffin for the brave and tragic little boy's final sendoff.
Not at all easy to watch but like Ben were made to understand that death isn't the end but a new beginning for those, that's all of us, who end up facing it and it's only the living that suffer in losing a loved one to it with the person that's soon to be gone being been released from the suffering that he or she is going through. By the time that death finally overtakes little Ben he as well as everyone around him have accepted his fate knowing that his suffering-From the ravages of the AIDS virus- has finally ended for him as well as themselves.
Not as dark and depressing as most films-Like "Love Story"-about a person facing death with us knowing what the end would be almost as soon as the movie opens with Ben's parents and friends of the family attending his funeral. It's in the long flashback that gets us to know the causes of Ben's death that really makes the movie so touching and able to sit through. Eevn Ben's dad Greg loses it late in the film by suffering sever depression at home and at his job as a home builder over his son Ben's fate and almost ending up in the hospital himself. It takes an extreme amount of strength and courage for Greg and his wife Claire to see the whole thing,their son Ben's impending death, through with the kindly and also suffering from depression and sleep deprivation Uncle George, Ned Beatty, a carpenter by trade constructing Ben's coffin for the brave and tragic little boy's final sendoff.