Oliver Sacks: His Own Life
Documentary about the life and work of the legendary neurologist and storyteller, as he talks about his battles with drug addiction, homophobia and the medical establishment.
On January 15th, 2015, a few weeks after completing his memoir, Oliver Sacks learned that the rare form of cancer for which he had been treated seven years earlier had returned, and that he had only a few months to live. One month later, he sat down for a series of filmed interviews in his apartment in New York. For eighty hours, surrounded by family and friends, notebooks from six decades of thinking and writing about the brain, he talked about his life and work, his dreams and fears, his abiding sense of wonder at the natural world, and the place of human beings within it. He spoke with astonishing candour, and with unflinching honesty – a profoundly gifted 81-year-old man facing death with remarkable courage and vitality who was still vigorous while facing the end. He was determined to come to grips with what his life has meant and what it means to be, as he put it, ‘a sentient being on this beautiful planet.’