“It was a wonderful place where you could go to die — but it doesn’t take away from the fact that they died.” This is how one interviewee describes 5B, the trailblazing San Francisco hospital ward that pioneered a more humane method of nursing AIDS sufferers during the epidemic’s paranoid 1980s zenith, affording terminal patients the care, understanding and even affection often denied them in a bigoted outside world. It’s a quote that sums up the approach of Dan Krauss and Paul Haggis’s straight-for-the-tear-ducts documentary “5B,” which seeks first-hand inspiration and optimism amid the wreckage of an unavoidably bleak chapter in recent American history. Interviewing nurses, survivors and even one of the ward’s most viciously homophobic detractors to evoke the frenzied us-against-them mentality that once defined a now-manageable disease, it’s conventional, occasionally maudlin docmaking that nonetheless grips the heart exactly when it needs to.
Set to hit U.S. theaters on June 14 through Verizon Media outlet Ryot — following a canny Stateside premiere on the opening night of Los Angeles Pride — “5B” will doubtless find an especially large and receptive audience on streaming platforms. Cinematically, it may be best remembered as the first nonfiction directing credit for Haggis, albeit shared with more seasoned docmaker Krauss (a two-time Oscar nominee for short subjects). For the “Crash” helmer, it’s less of a departure than you might think: Never one to shy away from either blunt-force feeling or well-wrangled viewer manipulation, he’s in his element with a slick, audience-minded doc that, on several occasions, times and withholds key revelations for surprise effect and maximum emotional payoff.
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