The Farewell Party (2014)

Although I’m far from being an elderly person, I’m now 40 and am more and more realising how real death is. You notice it by people in your surroundings dying or seeing actors or artists you’ve been following your whole life pass away. We are all mortal and hope we’ll die in a peaceful way, preferably in our sleep. The possibility is there that you’ll get a disease which can’t be cured, which makes the end painful and tough. What are your options then? Do you want to wait for death to come naturally or do you decide to look at euthanasia? It is a possibility is some countries, but this isn’t the case everywhere as this movie from Israel shows.

The movie revolves around a group of elderly people of which one wants to end it. His wife wants to give him an overdose of pills, but her friends stop her because she will be jailed for murder. They decide to approach a veterinarian and together their plan is to make a machine which will allow the person to press the button to euthanize himself. This does bring some moral dilemmas though which test the friendship within the group, especially when somehow other people find out about the machine and start asking to use it.

Euthanasia is a subject which has been brought to the screen previously, for example in You Don’t Know Jack with Al Pacino (who played Dr.Kevorkian), but it remains an interesting thing to think about. Should you allow someone to end their own lives? The Farewell Party clearly shows that from the point of view of people who would want to allow this, but do so with some critical remarks. The tone is mainly sombre, but the movie still has a couple of funny moments which don’t stand out. There even is a musical number which you won’t forget soon as it looks very surrealistic. The discussion about euthanasia still hasn’t died down and this movie offers enough material to keep it going and makes you think about your own mortality.