In the first scene of American Doctor, one of the three featured doctors, Mark Perlmutter, argues with documentarian Poh Si Teng that she can’t blur the faces/bodies of the deceased children in Gaza. It preserves their dignity, she argues. “Israel took their dignity,” the doctor successfully argues back. The scene ends with an unfiltered photograph of several dead Palestinian children, lined up side by side looking like soiled and bloodied dolls.
American Doctor ends even more brutally, depicting what the movie repeatedly foreshadows: the intentional bombing of one of Gaza’s many hospitals, which leaves a stairway full of dead medical professionals and patients in a place that is supposed to be a safe haven, even in war.
In between, Teng follows her three medical subjects as they alternate between visiting Gaza to help the injured and returning to the States where they futilely argue that Israel is committing war crimes.
The scenes set in the U.S. are less effective, perhaps because they’re preaching to the choir or simply because we know and they know that their arguments fall on deaf ears, words twisted from being anti-Israeli government to accusations of antisemitism.
Still, American Doctor is one of those essential, emotionally powerful documentaries that highlight a modern travesty. In time, hopefully, we will be able to reflect back on this film, those in power willing to learn from past mistakes. Meanwhile, people suffer in droves as their civilization is battered until no longer recognizable.
Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.
