Hal Kitchen
Today’s sojourn through the Virtual Releases of the 66th BFI London Film Festival is characterized by two films, both screening under the “Love” section, with another particular commonality of theme. Both Emily Atef’s European drama More Than Ever and Ondi Timoner’s personal documentary Last Flight Home both focus intently on mortality, terminal illness, end of life care, and the right to choose how we exit the world.
More Than Ever (dir. Emily Atef, France)
Anchored as it is by a typically phenomenal performance by Vicky Krieps (who also led Corsage to the festival’s best film prize), More Than Ever is slow, uneven, meandering, contrived, and occasionally frustratingly redundant, but also poignant, mature, tragic, romantic and sometimes extremely powerful. It’s far from a bad film and often strikingly resembles a great one, but the dramatic force it seeks too often eludes it as it pursues its thin, overstretched and one-note narrative.
Krieps plays Helene, a woman who has been diagnosed with a lung disease from which her only salvation may be a risky, by no means guaranteed and only 50% effective surgery. If she is to die, Helene does not wish to do so in a hospital bed or on an operating theatre, so she’s hesitant to accept the treatment. Her disease has also come between her and her husband Matthieu (Gaspard Ulliel, for whom this will be his last released work as he sadly passed away himself in January of this year) whose constant concern has become suffocating. For Helene, it is becoming increasingly obvious that in order to find peace, dying is something she must do alone, on her own terms.
Helene’s desire for space, independence and solitude in her final days is something much easier for the audience to understand than it is for Matthieu, who warily fights her every step of the way. The more articulate moments between the two of them are exceptionally powerful and Krieps gets to show off once again what an emotionally judicious performer she can be (when not being directed by M Night Shyamalan). The film’s final moments are superb and the scenes where she struggles to explain her position to Matthieu are fraught, touching and easily related to. Ulliel has less opportunities as the emotionally burdened, trying-to-be-supportive spouse, but he musters enough chemistry in a short period of time and there’s an uncanny feel to watching such scenes posthumously. Like many romances, I can’t help but feel theirs suffers from the absence of the honeymoon. We don’t get many hints as to what they were like before Helene’s disease came between them, an issue with the film that becomes especially evident when she argues that being around him reminds them of the life she used to have with him and never will again.
It’s not as if more time couldn’t have been devoted to their life together as the more than two hour runtime of More Than Ever moves at an often glacial pace whenever the two are apart. Searching for people who might see her perspective, Helene finds Bent (Bjorn Floberg) a Norwegian artist who has been sharing photographic insights from his own battle with cancer. Seeking a sympathetic ear she goes to him, in a chain of events that’s as unrewarding as it is contrived. Decamping to Norway gives the film some pretty scenery and the chance for Helene to gain some perspective, but despite Floberg’s performance, the addition of Bent to the cast does little for the film’s growth.
Outside of a few standout scenes between Helene and Mathieu, More Than Ever severely lacks for any momentum or inspiring energy. A slow pace needn’t be a bad thing if we’re consistently provided with insightful, ephemeral details to ruminate on, but More Than Ever offers an understocked menu of food for thought. Krieps, Ulliel and Floberg do their best to give their characters an inner life – it really is hard to overstate how brilliant Krieps is—but they struggle to come up with things to do beyond hash out the same debates in increasingly exhausted tones. One feels for them, but their relationship is rarely as compelling as our hearts tell us it should be, with their story an anemic one that leaves you hungry for stimulation, structure and closure.
Last Flight Home (dir. Ondi Timoner, USA)
A very different experience is offered by Last Flight Home, a documentary following the last two weeks in the life of Eli Timoner, founder of Air Florida airlines who lived the last forty years of his life partially paralyzed through a stroke and finally elected to end his own life at the age of ninety-two. This process was documented by his youngest daughter Ondi, a documentary filmmaker, and edited into this film.
Unlike More Than Ever‘s Matthieu, Eli’s family seem to be all in accord with his wishes. He has lived a long life and his degenerative condition is making his care increasingly painful for himself and those around him. As a deeply religious family (one of his daughters is a Rabbi) all the Timoners, Eli above all, are confident in their faith in the afterlife Eli is being kept from: “the next adventure”. Consequently, the film follows Eli and his family as he spends his final days bidding his loved ones farewell, preparing to negotiate the intricacies of medical practice and Californian law around ending one’s own life and exploring the nuances in how each of his family members deal with his impending demise.
The film is a family affair, down to the music, composed by Eli’s daughter in law Morgan, and the family are involved in every step of the events onscreen. Ondi’s camera barely leaves Eli’s bedroom throughout the fifteen-day waiting period —a legal and medical requirement to give Eli time to reflect on his decision—and hardly any part of the process appears to be off limits. Through this process we gain a window into Eli’s discomfort, regrets, humor ,and the life he lived up to this point. It can often draw the viewer into an intimacy that can become uncomfortable, as they are forced into confrontation with his lived experiences. The film’s primary goal is assuredly as a eulogy to a sharp, acerbic, and loving husband, father and friend, but it serves a dual purpose to demystify the process of euthanasia. It’s not polemical, though, and will likely leave the viewer with the same opinions and perspectives it found them with. Some might well be uncomfortable with the process and the level of access provided, which largely goes uninterrogated. There is a moment where Eli complains about wearing a microphone on his deathbed but declines to have it removed when offered. I have no doubt he was, but it still would’ve been nice to have seen him confirm on camera that he was enthusiastically in favor of the process being filmed and aware of what that would entail.
Eli lived a specific and eventful life with dramatic highs and lows, his company went through boom and bust, and he lived an active life as a father and political player, until his illness forced him to pass the mantle to his children. The film mentions his regrets, some of which he recounts before his passing. It does not mention the air disaster that led to the deaths of seventy-eight people, nor does it make any connection between it and the financial collapse of his company, nor with his stroke six months later. With such an intense familial focus and authorial control, it’s understandable that such events were deliberately excluded, they would draw attention away from what was evidently felt to be the immediate focus of the documentary. However, those with a more inquiring outsider’s perspective might well consider the omission dissatisfying. It’s a place where the intimacy of the creation of the documentary works against it, as family members are generally less curious and interrogative about one another than strangers would be.
There’s no doubt Last Flight Home can be a tough and a morbid watch, and would likely be a frustrating one too, depending upon the strength of your feelings, on a variety of topics. It’s a strange and powerful experience to be invited to witness the actual induced death of a stranger on camera and likely one many would feel they do not need to participate in. It’s just as certain though, that Last Flight Home will be a deeply impactful experience for many who do choose to attend it.
