Ian McIntosh, Executive Director Not Dead Yet:
To the best of my knowledge, one of the last tasks Founder, President and CEO of Not Dead Yet (NDY), Diane Coleman completed, days before her sudden passing last November, was to watch Reid Davenport’s Life After.
Diane intended to write a fulsome review. And although she could not publish her thoughts in time, she left one of sorts, complete in its brevity, in an email to the film’s creators, saying that Life After is: “a wonderful film”.
In this arena and in our community, there’s no higher praise. As Diane’s successor, serving as the Executive Director of NDY, and as a self-confessed cinephile, having seen the documentary several times now, I can confirm that like everything else Diane weighed in on: Of course, she’s right. Life After is a wonderful film for too many reasons to expand upon here and now.
But Multimedia Films, the production house for Life After, notes on its website a synopsis of the documentary, which in part reads:
“In 1983, a disabled Californian woman named Elizabeth Bouvia sought the ‘right to die,’ igniting a national debate about autonomy and the value of disabled lives. After years of courtroom battles, Bouvia vanished from public view. Sundance-winner Davenport embarks on a personal investigation to find out what really happened to Bouvia and reveal why her story is disturbingly relevant today.”
Briefly, although the documentary is primarily about Elizabeth Bouvia, Reid Davenport – a disabled filmmaker – masterfully unveils a singular disability rights fight hidden in the collective memory of Elizabeth’s family; in the unsuspecting life of a middle-class Canadian with disabilities navigating that country’s eugenical healthcare enterprise; and in the eternal echo of Melissa Hickson’s reasoned pleas with the ableist physician of her late husband, Michael, and the entrenched disability bias in health care that helped to ensure his life end early.
Mrs. Hickson’s involvement with the film is particularly poignant. The story of Michael Hickson dismantles the insincere rhetorical question proponents of decriminalized assisted suicide and euthanasia so often ask in hearings, lobbying meetings, and in online communications – Where is the record of coercion and abuse? Michael Hickson’s story provides exclamation points in this argument against discrimination by demonstrating that ableism can and does kill through a multitude of delivery systems in health care. And that that pernicious form of ableism has never needed explicit laws to rationalize that a disabled life is worth less than those without disabilities. Assisted suicide laws don’t provide the “right to die” any more than voting rights provide the “right to think” or a fishing license provides the “right to breathe”. Assisted suicide laws are immunity laws that protect those preying upon society’s most vulnerable.
From 2021, the below provides a brief glimpse into the sequence of events that eventually led to the wrongful death and disability lawsuit filed in the Michael Hickson case, :
“Antibiotics were initially provided, and lab results determined they were effective. Mr. Hickson’s physicians even identified the specific bacterial organism at the root of his infection. Yet, only three days later, they abruptly withdrew the antibiotics and all life-sustaining treatment, designated Mr. Hickson as Do Not Resuscitate and placed him in hospice. When pressed for an explanation as to why they would not treat him, in a legally recorded conversation, Dr. Viet Vo told Mrs. Melissa Hickson, “as of right now, his quality of life, he doesn’t have much of one.” Dr. Vo then distinguished Mr. Hickson from other of his patients who were being treated aggressively for COVID–19, “his quality of life is different than theirs. They were walking, talking.”
Life After, like very few film experiences demand these days, takes Marshal McLuhan’s maxim “the medium is the message” and synthesizes our preferred slogan, “Nothing About Us Without Us” into a singular remarkable experience, where the director, the film, the subjects, their stories and their lives convey in kind and in distinction with our own. Or as this recent Democracy Now! article quotes Davenport on the film:
“This film is not about suicide. It’s about the phenomenon that leaves disabled people desperate to find their place in a world that perpetually rejects them.”
Halfway through its present theatrical run, with ten more virtual showtimes and five more cities for people to screen and attend the film, Life After’s schedule can be found HERE.
Positive reviews continue to roll in, from disabled and nondisabled viewers alike. For the former, disabled people have conveyed how powerful it is to have their concerns and experiences affirmed and represented on screen. From nondisabled people, Life After has been a perspective changing experience about the disability experience and the inherent discrimination assisted suicide laws pose in a world where disabled people have never been given full citizenship.
Reid Davenport’s most important film to date is a film of its time for all-time. It is ground gained, history revealed, and a gentle voice to the dark thoughts that say assisted suicide is rational just because you have a disability.
For Diane.