In addition to a family's love, the documentary depicts the many obstacles that impede a humane approach to death, from the bureaucratic legwork to the physical difficulties of end-of-life care.
If there’s a unifying element to the documentaries that Pasadena-based Ondi Timoner has been directing for the past three decades, it’s her enduring fascination with confidently delusional men: entrepreneurs, cult leaders, visionaries, rock stars. Think Anton Newcombe, the Brian Jonestown Massacre frontman and truculent protagonist of “Dig!” or Josh Harris, the dot-com futurist profiled in “We Live in Public.
She also spoke to a therapist “to see if I was trying to hide from something or mediate my relationship to his dying, and she actually, to my surprise, said: ‘If you feel like you need to film, you should film.’” There may be no such thing as a good death, but the 92-year-old Eli ends his life surrounded by unconditional family love, expert caretakers, a few happy surprises and a sense of bodily autonomy. He makes his decision with a sound mind and never wavers in his conviction.After Eli’s death, Timoner’s sister asked her to compile the footage into a five-minute memorial video. “I stood up a week later with a 32-minute video,” Ondi says.
California is one of only a handful of states that offer the option of medical aid in dying, and the process can be onerous. It’s also a cause that doesn’t have many champions, “because death and dying is something we humans avoid as much as possible,” Timoner says.Our panel of veteran TV journalists tell you what’s buzzworthy in 14 categories of the 2023 Emmys.
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