8 Broken Hearts is a 2018 documentary about eight brave individuals who undergo a moving transformation by sharing their experiences and courageously baring their souls for this emotionally powerful journey.
A film like 8 Broken Hearts is completely critic proof because it has nothing to do with trying to entertain or truly even educate. It’s a raw, personal account and as such is much less a traditional film experience than an invitation to sit and listen, and listening is key because doing so is all you can do, the film a collection of in-your-face testimonials that allows you to fall into their heartache and, as surely any one of them will feel familiar, sink into your own.
Written and directed by Sam Hurwitz, the film focuses on eight people of varying ages and ethnicity who sit in front of a dusty tan backdrop and stare directly into a close camera, baring their souls. These are stories of family, where subjects talk about fathers and mothers, grandparents and siblings, all who had great and terrible affect on their lives. These range from cancer to alcoholism to abuse to crime and more, each revealing how their childhoods were steered and shaped by these events and how years later they have come to define much of who they are. This produces moments of agony on screen, confessions of resentment and rage, betrayal and great sorrow. Naturally, it’s hard to watch.
As a personal journey, clearly the opportunity to speak freely, unjudged and uninterrupted is somewhat cathartic for these people. That doesn’t mean this is 70 minutes of people in tears, even as moments of such organically arise. Instead, it’s more deeply nuanced than that, the film not a series of one story after another but a string of broken chapters where we revisit them time and again as they slowly unspool their tales.
It would seem a difficult juggling act, but Hurwitz creates a kind of group-of-four montage that keeps it well balanced. If I were to guibble, it would be the light piano music that plays unbroken throughout, which lends a sort of false emotional manipulation that detracts a bit from the voices, however, their words tremble and echo with powerful resonance, leaving this a minor concern.
8 Broken Hearts says what it is right in the title. It’s an unusual film in that it is simply eight confessions with no bells or whistles, eight stories of truth that tap into a larger singular chronicle of humanity. I think that is what Hurwitz is after, to let these people be the voice of many others, for no doubt, myself included, some of these will be close to us all.
8 Broken Hearts is now available on iTunes, Amazon, Amazon Video, and Google Play