There are 13 movies opening on Toronto screens today. One of them, which is only playing a handful of shows at the Projection Booth in Leslieville, is a documentary called How To Die In Oregon.
Produced for HBO Documentary Films and screened at Hot Docs last year, Peter D. Richardson’s doc takes a clear-eyed look at the subject of terminally ill people who want to end their lives. The state of Oregon legalized physician-assisted suicide in 1994 for those with less than six months to live. (Two doctors have to sign off on the prognosis, making it difficult to game the system.)
Oregon’s law was called the Death With Dignity Act, and Richardson’s documentary makes us understand exactly what that phrase means, applying the same respect and compassion to the medical staff who attend to the dying as it does to the dying themselves. It doesn’t flinch from the reality of its subject matter – even experienced in peaceful surroundings under controlled conditions, death is still a wrenching, awful thing – but neither does it sugar-coat anything. It assumes that we’re mature enough to handle what we’re about to see, and make our own decisions about it.
It’s not the sort of documentary that sends you out on a high Richardson isn’t interested in making any grand statements or even persuading those who oppose assisted suicide. He’s just showing us how it works, and leaving us alone to think about it afterward. I’m grateful this movie exists, and sorry that it wasn’t eligible for this year’s Best Documentary Feature Oscar due to premiering on HBO in the U.S. That shouldn’t keep you from seeing it now.
Oh, right, the Oscars. Everyone’s fixating on the Academy Awards this week, and I suppose that’s appropriate even if Billy Crystal’s hosting and the quality of the competition is a little thin (Midnight In Paris? Really?), it’s still the biggest movie event of the year.
So here are my obligatory predictions, with the usual caveat that none of this matters and I don’t actually care: The Artist, Jean Dujardin, Viola Davis, Christopher Plummer, Octavia Spencer, A Separation, The Artist (Original Screenplay), The Descendants (Adapted Screenplay), Woody Allen (Director).
It’s all very safe and predictable, but it’s been that kind of year the only upsets I can actually see happening are Meryl Streep taking Best Actress or The Help riding its own wave of pandering nostalgia to surge past The Artist for Best Picture. It’s just as empty a construction as The Artist, but the feelgood racism angle means voters can say The Help is “about” something, just like Crash.
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