Prize Given to Oregon Documentary on Assisted Suicide Tells Us More About the Judges Than the Film

From The Oregonian:

“How to Die in Oregon,” an intimate and poignant film about the impact of Oregon’s 1994 Death With Dignity Act, won the Grand Jury Prize in the U. S. Documentary Competition at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival tonight, one of the most prestigious awards that can be won by a non-fiction film anywhere in the world.

Director Peter D. Richardson, an Oregon native whose debut feature, “Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon,” played to acclaim at Sundance in 2006, stood atop a field of 16 competing documentaries that were selected from a field of 841 submissions. 

I’m not exactly surprised that this film received top honors.  The memory of the 2005 “Kill the Cripple” night at the Oscars is still fresh.  Two films dealing with the euthanasia of characters with disabilities were nominees in both the Foreign Picture and Best Picture categories.  Here is part of what we wrote at the time:

To be fair, other movies dealing with disability ended up with nominations as well. The movie “Ray,” for example, received a “best picture” nomination. This only proves that Hollywood will love someone who is blind as long as the person is lucky enough to be talented, famous and musical.

We figure critics left the movie “Ray” humming. When those same critics left from seeing “Baby,” which ends with Eastwood’s character killing the now-paralyzed character played by Swank, they were in tears. This, they’ve told us all, is how pictures are supposed to be.  Now the Academy is telling us the same thing.

And, in fact, both “Million Dollar Baby” and “The Sea Inside” won in their respective categories.

So, it’s not a shocker that a bunch of folks in the film trade would go head over heels for a documentary that sounds an awful lot like a PSA for legalization of assisted suicide.  In other words, the award probably tells us more about the judges granting the award than it does about the film itself.  I doubt I’d lose any money if I bet that the judges were predisposed to approve of legalized assisted suicide, and when the film preached at them, they didn’t recognize it as a sermon.

If that seems a little harsh, I came across an interesting review by Matt Goldberg at Collider.com – Goldberg claims not to have an opinion on legalized assisted suicide.  I’m inclined to believe him, based on his somewhat skeptical review of the film:

How to Die in Oregon makes a case for “death with dignity” but that case is weakened by Richardson’s over-reliance on the emotional impact and conducting unnecessary interviews.  If the film wants to sell me on legalizing euthanasia, then I want to know more facts.  I want to know about other options for end-of-life care.  I want to know if the doctor-prescribed death drink ever fails to kill the patient and instead sends them into a persistent vegetative state.  At one point, a title card tells us that Cody is improving under “palliative care”, but it doesn’t tell us what that means or entails.  Rather than take the time to show a broader view of end-of-life care, Richardson shows tangential scenes which don’t benefit the emotional or intellectual impact of the movie.  For example, in one scene he meets with the founder of the “Hemlock Society” (a name I found dreadfully glib), an organization dedicated to legalizing euthanasia.  After the scene, we never see the society’s founder again.

On an emotional level, How to Die in Oregon is a triumph.  It pulls at your heartstrings without feeling manipulative and when we look at Cody, we see our own loved ones, and the thought of losing them slowly and painfully is absolutely gut-wrenching.  But on an intellectual level, the film is unsatisfying.  Euthanasia is a loaded issue and Richardson does his audience a disservice by not providing them with a broader view of the benefits and weaknesses of various options one has when considering their end-of-life care.

It’s funny that Goldberg asks about failed assisted suicides in Oregon, because it turns out that there were problems with that in 2010.  Oregon – perhaps to get their report out to coincide with the documentary publicity – published its annual report much earlier this year than in previous years.  I’ll share more about the report later, but here is a part relevant to Goldberg’s question (pdf):

• Two of the patients who took the medications during 2010 did not die after ingestion, but died later from their underlying illness. Twenty of the patients who received prescriptions in 2010 did not take the medications and died of their underlying illness. Status is pending for 15 patients: two have died but we have not received the follow up questionnaire, and for 13 we have neither the death certificate nor follow up questionnaire (Figure 2).
• One of the two patients who awoke after ingesting the medication regained consciousness within 24 hours after ingestion and died of their underlying illness five days later; the other gained consciousness 3 ½ days after ingestion and died of their underlying illness three months later. Regurgitation was reported in both instances.

Why didn’t the two individuals who didn’t die not make a second attempt at suicide?  Did the attempt make them sicker and make them unable to make another attempt.  Did the act of staring at the reality of death make them decide they’d just as soon put it off for awhile?

The report provides no answers – to these or other questions.  I’d sure like to know more about the details of the two failed suicides.  I suspect that reviewer Matt Goldberg and any other thinking reviewer might want to know more as well.  Unfortunately, thinking people were in short supply when it came to judging documentaries at Sundance this year.