Courageous Warriors: Beauty from the Ashes (2021) Film Review
Courageous Warriors: Beauty from the Ashes, directed by Darla Rae, is an essential film. Even if it looks like another documentary about breast cancer survivors, it brings up a subject that isn’t usually portrayed in films of that nature: Surviving goes beyond one person. Mothers, daughters, strangers.
When the film could be a random collection of testimonies given by breast cancer survivors, or doctors, it decides to be something else. It depicts the experience from everyone in sight who is affected by a disease as terrible and random as that. From husbands, to daughters, and sons, everyone is given a voice. This heartwarming arrangement of claims is an emotionally uplifting journey.
Because Darla Rae, willfully includes the visions of those around the affected in the film. She says it herself: “how are you supposed to sit and watch someone you love actually die?” It’s a question that isn’t usually on the forefront of the situation, and it’s as important as others.
Personally, I believe the film’s emotional blow is when Missy Feher bravely states the facts behind her diagnosis. During a pandemic, absolutely alone, going through something so horrible as breast cancer. It’s a powerful commentary on the randomness of something so damaging. Sure, we know what to do in the case of diagnosis, but do we really know how to act? Those who suffer from the disease meet their own version of hell through a curing process that’s sometimes as deteriorating as the cancer itself. And caregivers must go on with a life that’s new. As one says: “kids still ask you to play, whether you have cancer or not”. Life goes on, no matter what. And Courageous Warriors: Beauty from the Ashes is one gem of film that depicts the weird process of life turning into something else.
The film also goes beyond the specific disease and sheds light on the consequences from a successful cure. Lymphedema isn’t often talked about as it should be and in the film enough information is given to raise awareness about it. This is a key aspect of a film because from a distance it could be confused for a heavily dramatic and scripted film, and it’s definitely not.
Courageous Warriors: Beauty from the Ashes goes for the non traditional forms of cure as well. It displays the possibility of incorporating cannabis in the process. And the film puts it out there as yet another display of resolution that is necessary for dealing with cancer.
You get the feeling Darla Rae has decided something and that is to get rid of every doubt that will always be a doubt. Instead she has made a film about reality and hope combined together through several mechanisms. COPE, Nurse Navigators, and even tattoo artists; every “program” out there is part of something bigger that still needs to be accessible to everyone.
Optimism comes in strange ways sometimes, but it’s still a means of human will, a manifestation of the need to survive. Courageous Warriors: Beauty from the Ashes closes the circle by going deep in the stories of those who live the disease first hand. The discussion transcends age, skin color and even genders. There’s nothing more fundamental than that.
