The maid happens to just pop in at the right time? Please. The film would've been better and (probably more realistic) if she had killed herself. She didn't want to be a burden to anyone and didn't want her family to watch her become someone she wasn't.
shareThe point here is that she was barely able to do it.
See how she uses the brush cup to drink tap water. She didn't know at all what she was doing. And with a little distraction she let all pills fell on the ground.
Why do you think that she accompplishing the action, in the situation she was, would be more realistic?
Instead of that woman, it could be the wind, a TV or a dog. It looked scarily realistic for me!
Also, the whole point of the movie is about living with Alzimer. Not about somebody with it killing himself without noticing.
But given that she truly felt her life was hell because she was losing the one thing that she prized (her intellect), it would've made a LOT of sense for her character to kill herself. Remember the conversation with her daughter, when she said something about losing everything and that it was hell?
shareIt's more complex than that.
As I said in other posts, the movie shows that Alzimer is troubling for the deseased and for the family, and also says that it's possible to live with it and keep some active life and not suffer and even be happy with it.
She suffered in the beginning when she was losing the first brain abilities, and she made that decision. But what if she'd change the decision later?
Well when the desease progressed, she seems to get used to it and to what she was losing, and she was happy. Maybe if it was with some relative of her, she'd look at it and change her opinion about dying. She didn't look like suffering or missing her old life at all, it seems she found a new one. When she lost her intellect and her memory, she found other things to prize.
She didn't look like wanting to die at all. I've seen movies (Butterfly Effect 1 in example) showing people wanting to die and not being able to.
Also, if it was a matter of dying because the desease, a fall or some other accident would be more realistic to me than a past self leaving a message with orders to suicide.
I know the suicide attempt was dramatic. But don't let it overshadow the scene immediately preceding it.
Alice is in her kitchen. Proud to still be able to care for herself. Enjoying life. Stay alone at her house. Make her own tea. Skype with her daughter. Share her daughter's career progression.
The tragedy of the video is that a naive younger, less aware, self almost talks her into killing herself. Almost takes away the life she's grown to appreciate, despite the challenges.
That's a very interesting interpretation, and I can totally see how it can be valid to view it from that perspective. It's the opposite of mine, but you gave me some food for thought there.
I assume we agree that it was a very intense, edge-of-your-seat situation when she was agonizingly working on getting the pills out, then the water, etc. I was holding my breath--but rooting for her to be able to pull it off and not have it fall apart (as it did).
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By the time Alice found the video of herself, she was already past being able to finish the task.
shareI don't think so. She almost did.
I was frustrated that her husband didn't put more care into helping her keep the lifeline that was her phone.
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That part was set up in the beginning of the film and I know that I was keeping it in the back of my mind throughout. But boy did the 'twist' shake me up to the bone. And that was the sad point of such a terrible disease : You wanna be prepared to die in dignity. However, do it too soon and you miss out on short but valuable time still enjoying your life and the people whom you love. But then there is a horrifying reality : wait and you might not be able to remember to do it...It was chilling.
shareI felt bad for alice that she was reduced to being an invalid.
shareThat's why we must throw away the idiotic taboo about fearing death and accept we MUST have the right to choose when and how to die.
Instead of setting it all up, making the questions, hiding the video and the pills, she could just have told the family and planned it all. When she reached the right point, everybody just "take leave" and then she dies with dignity.
So she tells her family and they put her in a home or a loony bin so that she can be kept on 24 hour suicide watch. Pffft. Not everyone's family is going to be down with someone committing voluntary suicide, esp if they tell the family while they are still reasonably healthy.
Your comment, however well-meant, is not realistic. Not everyone thinks "dying with dignity" is an option. I personally don't know if I could make that decision or not for myself, let alone be ordered by a loved one to accept that he will commit suicide whenever he chooses. I sure wouldn't say "oh, ok honey, that's cool, you just decide when you wanna check out, let us know and we'll go to Buenos Aires." (Being sarcastic, but I'm trying to make a point, not insult you.) I think I would freak the **** out and never, ever leave him alone.
Read again what I said, that's why we must throw away the idiotic taboo about fearing death.
If this idiotic fear isn't throw away, of course it won't work. Anybody helping on that will go to jail and that's it.
The point in dying with dignity is exactally for being assisted and not having to do it by oneself with all the involved risks.
I couldn't agree more.
shareNo, it made a lot of sense that Alice had the foresight to make the video. The reality though (which she didn't grasp, at last fully, when she made it) was when the time came there would be no certainty that the act of taking the pills would be carried out. That's the tragic irony of it. For me, that was the most unsettling scene of the film.
shareI don't know if you read the novel. In the novel Alice still had things she wanted to accomplish. If she had succeeded in killing herself, she would have missed the birth of her grandchildren. In the novel Alice want to hold her grandchild, it was important to her. She wanted Lydia to get an education. For some reason that was left out of the movie. Before Alice was too far gone, Lydia told her mother she wanted an education. She wanted her mother to know all the advice about the merits of having an education worked. That was another goal of Alice, one she would have missed.
shareBut she's not going to know who her grandchildren are. She will walk into the room and the daughter will be there and she won't know her daughter or why she's there.
shareShe did not say she wanted to watch they grow up. Alice made some realistic goals, for a woman in her situation. That was the whole point of that speech she gave near the end of the movie. She was losing who she was, but she was not gone or done yet. She could still do a bit of living. She got to know her youngest daughter, knew she was going to college. She got to hold her grandchildren. (In the book, the movie ended with her holding her grandson. Both daughters and grandchildren were with her. Lydia was rehearsing the play.) Alice was still in her home surrounded by people who loved her. She was happy. She did not know who all the people were, but she felt love. She still had enough of herself, to recognize the love in the play Lydia was reading, because she still felt love.
The movie would have ended tragically even if Alice killed herself. There is no way this movie could have a happy ending.
Yes, it was super tense. I wonder if the filmmakers intended us to have our hearts in our throat hoping she wouldn't do it, or that she would be able to? You and I, it seems, were rooting for the latter, but we might have been "watching it wrong".
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I've been thinking a lot about this, too.
I remember that one of Dr. Kevorkian's first patients was a lady with early-onset Alzheimer's who wanted to die before she lost too much of her mind. She killed herself with Dr. Kevorkian's help not too long after her diagnosis. That lady was vilified for dying "too soon," because she was still somewhat functional. Dr. Kevorkian was also dragged through the mud.
You can't rely on loved ones to help you. I believe that Alice should have taken the pills herself shortly after she obtained them. That video thing seemed like a good idea, but obviously it didn't work. Besides, Alice only stumbled onto it accidentally, trying to open a link from her daughter.
One point to consider is that Alice understimated the desease. She believed that when she was unable to answer all the questions, she'd still be able to take the pills.
If she had planned to do it a bit before, like answering 1 of 6 questions, or making 1 of the questions be like yes for "I think I soon won't be able myself to brush my teeth", then it would have worked.
But again, that was meant to tangently cite euthanasia and to shock the public, not to focus the movie on a deseased person killing herself.
I'd like to see a movie of somebody developing a degenerative desease fighting for his right for euthanasia... But it would be sad and odd to see somebody spending the remaining of his life doing that instead of living it...
That movie already exists. It's called "The Sea Inside", with Javier Bardem. And yeah, who are we to judge somebody if they decide life is not worth living?
shareCheck out a great movie on just the subject you are looking for:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083326/combined
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What screwed up her plan was losing her phone. Her husband was so insensitive not to help her find it right away (or get a new one, backed up from iCloud).
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There's alot of controversy here...no way she would have included the family in her suicide plans...she left that video for herself because in her right mind she knew it was the right move-the only person she could really trust was herself..she still trusted herself, that's it.
shareAgreed. It parallels the film Wit,(also the story of a woman who was a very accomplished academic, and was diagnosed with stage four cancer), in that at the earlier stages, Alice still believes that in some way she will be able to out-smart the disease.
As for the thread itself, nobody here is in a position to say that someone else is better off dead.
On a stomach turning note, the idea that Alice was about to wash down the pills by drinking from the cup that held the tooth brushes was so repellant, I was thrilled when the pills hit the floor.
i don't even think she knew the implications of what taking the pills would do at that point. if you are going to die with dignity, do it while you are still able to realize you have made the choice. i think it would be horrifying for anyone to be killed or kill themselves in that state. as bad as it was, it was too late to do that. like killing a kitten.
shareMaybe. It's what she wanted when she still knew who she was and what was coming.
I wanted to see some resolution to that. Did they find the pills on the floor? The note on the bottle? What happened? I was disappointed in that part of it.