“Help me get it over with.”
Written/Directed by: Tal Granit, Sharon Maymon
Cast: Ze’ev Revach, Levana Finkelstein, Aliza Rosen
Swift shot: Depression, thy name is The Farewell Party. An Israeli film about a group of elderly friends living in the same community coping with death, and the slow, painful process of dying that our modern medicine has made possible. There were moments of levity, thank God, but this is not a fun film in the sense of Cocoon, for example.
Yehezkel (Revach) is a tinkerer, an inventor, who has been trying to help his wife of many years deal with her impending dementia. He is well-liked among his circle of friends, but his closest friend, Max (Shmuel Wolf) is suffering each day, each hour, each second, each breath, as he lies slowly dying. Max’ wife Yana (Aliza Rosen) is desperate to stop his pain, and is incredibly passionate and not afraid to tell people what she thinks . . . about, well, pretty much everything. Yana is not someone who you want to cross. She approaches Yehezkel to help kill Max, to assist his suicide.
They enlist the help of a new tenant to the nursing home, Dr. Daniel (Ilan Dar) who is a veterinarian and can provide the drugs and means to end Max’ suffering. Since Yehezkel is an inventor, he makes a crude suicide machine . . . out of a Sabbath timer, no less. Now, Max can control his own departure from his pain-laden shell.
Because people always talk . . . always, word spreads about Yehezkel’s kindness to Max, and soon he has another customer. But his wife Levana (Finkelstein) is disgusted by the whole thing, and remember, she’s got dementia coming in waves which are eroding her once trap-door like mind. The community manager keeps telling both Yehezkel and Levana that she needs to be sent to a specialized care facility for Alzheimers patients. And that’s all I will say about that.
I found the film depressing, but more than that, I wanted to know more about these people prior to them ending up at their curtain call. For example, we are led to believe that Max and Yehezkel are the best of friends, but there wasn’t enough exposition to reveal much about any of the characters. I am not hunting for an origin story, mind you, but something I can point to that exemplifies the principle characters’ breadth of life. I mean, in the end, aren’t most of us going to fade away into misery . . . wouldn’t it be nice to hold onto some robust, wonderful memories before then? And maybe the filmmakers could let us in on some of those memories?
I won’t take a stance on elderly euthanasia, but I will say this much, imagine if your pet could speak. Imagine if your pet could beg you to kill it. Many of us euthanize our pets to provide them mercy and a release from suffering. We become the killers, in essence, saving them from the act of suicide. The Farewell Party asks difficult questions, but provides no real answer. Things just sort of happen, and we go along with it. There was no closure to this film. It just ends without bothering to begin in the first place.
