BEFORE: Al Pacino carries over from "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood". Sorry that I didn't get more of his films in January, to connect with "The Irishman" and "Stand Up Guys", but I guess there was a reason, and to every thing there is a season - now I can use his other films to get me further along in the chain.
I had some time today (after essentially doing the last bit of work I can do from home, so starting tomorrow I really have to start on my personal "to do" list...) so I took a look at the path I had to get me from Mother's Day (May 10) to Father's Day (June 21). It's still very early, so the fact that I had any confirmed path at all was perhaps unusual. However, the path I had was about 18 or 19 films short. I had about 10 to 12 films that seem to be on topic about fathers, but even counting from the last one in the chain, I was still going to come up short. Now, I could just take two weeks off in June and not watch anything, but really, that feels like a last resort, I'd rather take time off from movies in November and December. So I started with the chain I had, and looked for films on my primary and secondary watchlists that could fit in-between, or maybe little deviations I could take that would then link back up with the next film in the chain. I found quite a bit, thankfully.
Much of what I found was unexpected, and most hadn't been linked up to anything, connections I hadn't yet noticed, and some were films that had been in my chain before, but got removed when I did one shake-up or another, so now they're back in. It's not perfect, and it's still three films short, but right now it's the best I can do, at least without access to more Academy screeners, since I don't know when I'll be going back to my offices. But I can confirm that whatever else happens, I'll at least be blogging until Father's Day and my chain will get me there. Maybe in May I'll review it to see if I can fill up those last three spaces, or who knows, maybe by then the lockdown/isolation will be over, and in June maybe we can take a short three-day trip somewhere, and I won't have to watch movies then. Here's hoping, right?
THE PLOT: A look at the life and work of doctor-assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian.
AFTER: This might seem a little strange or ironic, watching a film about a doctor helping patients kill themselves at a time when there's a global pandemic, and so many doctors and nurses right now are doing all they can to help people survive it. But I've learned over time that there are so many coincidences like this in my programming, more than I'd ever expected, that essentially they may not even be coincidences at all, just events depicted that I can draw on for lessons that have more relevance when I juxtapose them with things happening in the news. And just as "Bombshell" both took on new meaning when seen through the prism of the Harvey Weinstein verdict, perhaps the tale of Jack Kevorkian can shed some light on the current crisis, or vice versa. We're hearing all kinds of stories out of hospitals right now - one day last week it was reported that 13 people died at a hospital in Queens, and now I see footage on Twitter of hospital corridors that seem empty. Which political party benefits from each conflicting side of the story? And how could there possibly even BE conflicting sides of the story during a crisis? And who's even trying to politicize this story in the first place.
The 1990's were a confusing time, perhaps, at least when people started to raise the issue about terminal patients and their right-to-life, and conversely their right to terminate that life, which seems to go against all rational thought concerning medical care. First, do no harm, and then as per the Hippocratic Oath, help the patient as best as you can. It's here in the second part that things get a little fuzzy, because does "helping the patient" mean that it's OK to help them die, if they're suffering? Yes and no, I guess - if a patient is actively dying, then the goal is to rid them of pain and make them as comfortable as possible during that process. But if they have a terminal condition, then what constitutes "help"? Do they have the right to check out early, bring about their own death in a painless way? Dr. Kevorkian clearly thought so and felt strongly about it, but the government of Michigan, and apparently many others, disagreed. Religion plays a role in this controversy for many people, which seems both good and bad to me. Good that people have a strong opinion and believe that life is sacred and should be preserved and extended whenever possible, but bad because these people believe in an afterlife and eternal judgment, but what if they're wrong? What if there is no afterlife, and dying early just means an end to suffering, and that's it, no further moral consequences in heaven or hell.
I'm not completely sure where I fall on this argument, thankfully I've never had a family member with a bad enough health condition that they were begging to die, and perhaps if I did that would greatly color my perceptions. I've had two cats who lived long enough that their bodies were basically worn out and betraying them, one just last November who we had to euthanize, and my wife and I debated for a very long time, before and after, whether it was the right thing to do. Eventually when he could barely walk or jump, fell down a lot and could no longer use a litter box, the choice seemed clear, and we had to take him on that last ride to the vet's office. We stayed with him while they injected him, and we watched him die, it was sad but necessary - I always regretted not staying with my previous cat, who somehow lived to nearly 25, in the last minutes of his life.
Some people view Kevorkian as a mass murderer, while others as a savior who brought peace to the terminally ill and their families in their final days. Which is closer to the truth, or does the truth lie somewhere in-between? What lessons, if any, can be drawn from this argument at a time when the Covid-19 virus is killing a certain percentage of the older and weaker people, and some people who have pre-exisiting conditions, or are in ill health. It's tough out there right now, and easy to paint the corona virus as the villain, but is it? It's just a virus, a series of molecules acting to reproduce itself as best as it can, it doesn't think or feel or realize its impact on humanity, right? So it can't be evil, per se, if it's acting with no evil intent, just self-preservation and replication. Follow the logic, and humanity itself is a virus on the planet Earth, humans all want to live and prosper and reproduce, and we don't view that process as good or evil, it's just life. The effects of the smaller virus on humans is incredibly terrible, but aren't we humans damaging the vessel that we live in, too? So if you hate the virus for killing humans, you've got to also hate humans for damaging the planet. Right?
I'm sort of getting off the track here - the fact is that Kevorkian developed a machine, which he called the "Mercitron", and it used an IV drip that would introduce several chemicals into a person's bloodstream, in a process similar to the "lethal injection" used in the capital punishment of mass murderers. The first chemical is a harmless saline solution, the second causes the recipient to fall into a coma, and the third one stops their heart. At some point, Kevorkian encountered difficulty procuring the chemicals, and switched over to tanks of carbon monoxide, in a process similar to when people commit suicide in their closed garages when they leave their car running. In most cases Kevorkian built the machine and hooked people up to it, but it was left to the terminal patient to flip the switch, or release the valve, which introduced the deadly chemicals into their own body. I suppose this became the fine legal point, whether this constituted suicide or murder, and Kevorkian was arrested and put on trial many times.
It's worth noting, perhaps, that Kevorkian chose his cases very carefully, he allegedly turned down about 97 percent of the people who requested his help in ending their lives. Look for a 26-year old (pre-Star Wars) Adam Driver, in his first feature film role here, playing a young man who tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide, but survived setting himself on fire, asking Kevorkian to help him finish the job. Kevorkian refuses, because the man's not terminally ill, just clinically depressed. Meanwhile, the Michigan prosecutors had to lobby for stronger laws to be passed, banning physician-assisted suicide, because the existing ones were too weak or vague to get "Dr. Death" convicted.
As seen here, Kevorkian kept defending his practice, challenging the laws, and testing the legal limits of them. In 1998 he assisted the suicide of a man with ALS, who was unable to self-administer the drugs. So, Kevorkian did it for him, and got convicted of second degree murder. Kevorkian was willing to appeal his case all the way to the Supreme Court, only it never got that far. Instead he served eight years, was released in 2007 and lived another four years on the lecture circuit before he died in 2011. He died of liver cancer, kidney problems and while hospitalized for pneumonia. I don't know whether it's fitting or ironic that his death was described as painless, and there were no artificial attempts to keep him alive. At some point, I guess it just is what it is.
The worst reports out of NYC hospitals these days seem to indicate that when there's a lack of beds or equipment, doctors are being forced to make tough decisions over who lives and who dies due to the pandemic. I hesitate to draw any analogies here, because the people working in our medical system right now are true heroes, putting themselves at risk for the greater good. We all need to support them as best we can, and if we can't do so directly the very least we can do is keep ourselves healthy and isolated if possible, to prevent any further drains on an already-taxed system. People in the affected states and cities who are still going about their business, or traveling to escape the virus, and therefore potentially also spreading it, are acting irresponsibly and probably extending the severity and length of the lockdowns.
For a while I thought a little differently, that perhaps it would be better for more people to get the corona virus sooner, because then humanity as a whole might develop an immunity more quickly, and once we reach a saturation point where the majority of people have recovered and are (theoretically) immune, then the virus could die out, having no place to go and reproduce further. But the human cost involved is just too great, and every person who dies in that scenario leaves a void in some family somewhere, so ultimately, it's the wrong way to go. If we could somehow insure that everyone would just stay indoors and avoid all human contact for two weeks, it should bring about the same conclusion with less loss of life, only it's impossible to get EVERYONE in any city, state or region to comply with the orders. We just have to do the best we can and hope for a swift result, either a developed vaccine or a communal immunity.
Also starring Brenda Vaccaro (also carrying over from "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"), Danny Huston (last seen in "Stan & Ollie"), Susan Sarandon (last seen in "The Banger Sisters"), John Goodman (last seen in "The Borrowers" (1997)), James Urbaniak (last seen in "Rebel in the Rye"), Eric Lange (last seen in "Danny Collins"), John Engler, Richard E. Council (last seen in "Thirteen Conversations About One Thing"), Sandra Seacat, Neil Brooks Cunningham (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Logan Crawford (ditto), Adam Driver (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Cotter Smith (last seen in "The Post"), David Wilson Barnes (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Deirdre O'Connell (last seen in "Winter Passing"), Todd Susman. Jeremy Bobb (last seen in "Marshall"), John Rue (last seen in "The Irishman"), Allen Lewis Rickman, Ana Reeder, Angela Pierce, Tom Kemp (last seen in "Professor Marston & the Wonder Women"), Mary Boyer, Deborah Hedwall, Daryl Edwards (last seen in "Rent"), Rondi Reed, Adam Mucci, with archive footage of Mike Wallace (last seen in "First Man"), Barbara Walters (last seen in "Mermaids").
RATING: 5 out of 10 uneaten prison meals
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