Nothing says, “I feel cheated” quite like two hours of waiting for Tilda Swinton to die. I’ve been waiting for Tilda Swinton to die for a while now. Not in real life, of course. But ever since Memoria, I figure that woman owes me a good screen death. A lot of blood would be nice, but I’ll take a simple auto-hank. You owe me for Memoria, Swinton … and The End, too!
And if you can’t get Tilda Swinton to die in a film titled “The End,” when can you?
Martha (Swinton) has cancer. (Oooh, this sound promising!) The cancer is winning, but Martha wants to go out on her own terms before she becomes not so much a human as a semi-sentient gelatinous pile of goo.
I get that.
If you’ve ever dealt with the end-of-life stage, you will realize there is a price to perseverance. And it’s not a pretty one. Wouldn’t it be nice if all death were just a neat cash transaction?
“Here’s the money.”
“There’s your life.”
“We’re good.”
No, it doesn’t work that way. In fact, many deaths are far from clean or unintrusive. I understand 100% a relative not wanting their beloved spouse/sibling/aunt/uncle/grandparent not to die. And in the same breath, I understand 100% the desire of that person to go out on their own terms. That is what Martha has chosen.
Unfortunately, Martha doesn’t have many friends who share this view, hence she has pulled Ingrid (Julianne Moore) out of her rolodex as Martha’s end-of-life partner. Martha plans to get a house in the country somewhere and quietly live it up for a week or two until picking the right time to take a suicide pill collected from the dark web. And when she does it, she wants a friend in The Room Next Door.
I never considered that death pills are things nobody buys in bulk (for obvious reason). In fact, buying more than one will even make dark web people uneasy. And who can blame them?
I digress.
This film is about Right-to-Death. This is an important topic. Unfortunately, it’s not a terribly broad topic … so when you pit Martha’s obdurate plan against Ingrid’s hesitation, that will only take you so far. Hence, the film enhanced itself
with cute stories, like the one where Martha’s baby-daddy came back from Vietnam with PTSD and the one where her random friend Martin deliberately travels from war-to-war for gay sex. Yes, these stories are better than the overarching one.
There’s a defiant statement in this film that most of us can get behind: “Cancer can’t get me if I get me first.” It turns suicide into a noble, rebellious quest. Hence, The Room Next Door has positioned itself to be the ultimate authority on the topic of Right-to-Death.
Yeah, it won’t get there. Ultimately, this film is well-meaning, but dull. And I didn’t see a single person in the theater shed a tear for Martha. Logically, that’s what you want because this is Martha’s noble victory, and yet, this is highly contradictory, no? Because let’s face it: you will only get the public solidly on your side by appealing to their emotions … and here you’ve deliberately subdued the feel for the character we need to root for.
There once was a woman with cancer
Who knew suicide was the answer
She wanted some help
And avoided yelp
Cuz I’m not sure you want a freelancer
Rated PG-13, 107 Minutes
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Writer: Pedro Almodóvar, Sigrid Nunez
Genre: More bold topics conservatives are wrong about
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Jack Kevorkian
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Pro-life monsters
