Not Going Quietly

Barkan proves a highly engaging man, impassioned but funnier than a terminally ill man should be. Intimate scenes with his young family are essential to the appeal of a film whose big issues remain as pressing now as they were during filming in 2018.

Along with his editor Kent Bassett, Bruckman weaves these events together rather conventionally yet thoughtfully, making plenty of room for Barkan’s home life and appealingly chipper character that he somehow manages to maintain through all his battles.

Health care is unquestionably one of the most complicated problems the government ever has to grapple with, even without the obstacles and obfuscation from dark money and corporate lobbyists. We do not need a briefing book, but the film would be more effective if it clarified some of the priorities Barkan and his group are advocating.

Not Going Quietly lets us see a fierce, and dying, advocate for health care show us what John Lewis meant by “Good trouble.”

The movie makes its points in grand, emotional gestures more than policy nuances, but what it lacks in sophistication it makes up in immediacy. The drama acts as a visceral of ode to the nature of activism under dire circumstances.

It is a warm and generous portrait, but the film lacks its central organizer’s propulsive shrewdness.

Smart, funny and endearingly sweary even when he loses the power to speak without computer assistance, Barkan is a charismatic character who’s easy to like, although one wonders how much the documentary crew resisted showing anything that might dent the halo the film sets round his head.