Last Flight Home

Coy­ness often gets in the way of peo­ple dying a good death. Few know how to talk about dying – this dis­com­fort is reflect­ed on a small scale in every­day dis­course through limp euphemisms like ​‘pass­ing away’, and on a large scale in the leg­is­la­tion of most coun­tries where any form of euthana­sia remains ille­gal. For the most part death hap­pens chaot­i­cal­ly, ini­tial­ly around us and even­tu­al­ly to us – it is not typ­i­cal­ly with­in the con­trol of a per­son or those close to them. We are not often prop­er­ly braced. 

Ondi Timoner’s Last Flight Home con­fronts the emo­tion­al and prac­ti­cal real­i­ties of planned, assist­ed death. The film shows her father Eli and their fam­i­ly in the last 15 days of his life through fly-on-the-wall footage as he fol­lows the Cal­i­for­nia End of Life Option Act and says his good­byes. Con­se­quent­ly, it’s a high­ly uncom­fort­able watch – it doc­u­ments the count­down to death in a deter­mined yet uneasy way. 

The law allows ter­mi­nal­ly ill Cal­i­for­nia res­i­dents to request a drug from their physi­cian that will end their life. If all the pro­ce­dures are fol­lowed, the patient will not be con­sid­ered to have died by sui­cide. The Tim­o­n­er fam­i­ly sto­ical­ly pre­pare to car­ry out Eli’s wish to ​“stop being manoeu­vred,” and die on his own terms. Rarely is there con­flict, oth­er than when Ondi insists that their moth­er, Elis­sa, vis­i­bly tired and unset­tled through­out, spends more time hold­ing Eli’s hand. 

The footage is inter­laced with archive film about Eli’s ear­ly life, most notably his role as the suc­cess­ful founder of Air Flori­da and sub­se­quent finan­cial strug­gles after being paral­ysed fol­low­ing a stroke. The strange lux­u­ry of know­ing when and where he will die means that Eli can con­duct a per­son­al press con­fer­ence, bid­ding farewell to friends and reflect­ing on sub­jects of pride and regret over his life­time. Eli’s oth­er daugh­ter Rachel is a rab­bi, and acts as both daugh­ter and spir­i­tu­al guide, which presents a curi­ous over­lap of roles.

The feel­ing gen­er­at­ed by the film is that of hav­ing stolen some­thing, watch­ing such per­son­al moments that are not dolled up for the cam­era. Coy­ness strikes again. The vis­cer­al real­i­ty, the catheters and bed­sores are dis­tract­ing both in their imme­di­ate grim­ness and because they alert you to your own squea­mish­ness, pro­vok­ing the dou­ble-guilt of see­ing and look­ing away. 

There is val­ue in this unapolo­getic hon­esty, and the Tim­o­n­ers’ deci­sion to make this doc­u­men­tary is a brave one – the cam­eras are referred to fre­quent­ly, and there are moments where Eli is asked if he would like to remove his mic, which he does not. Were the fourth wall to be fur­ther bro­ken, the film itself and its pur­pose addressed, an out­sider might feel more wel­come to watch. 

Empa­thy is unavoid­able – a lump of stone couldn’t be unmoved by the dark humour of a kind, wise old man reflect­ing on his life and faith, sur­round­ed by the warmth of his fam­i­ly, or by the fragili­ty of life and the ter­ri­ble mun­dane­ness of death out­lined in such details as how the lethal drug is sent through the post. But styl­is­ti­cal­ly and in terms of its con­tent, the film is not com­plete­ly acces­si­ble to a gen­er­al view­er. There is an imbal­ance between the unsen­ti­men­tal­i­ty of the cam­era ver­sus the sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty of the Tim­o­n­ers which is dif­fi­cult to both rec­on­cile and engage with.

How­ev­er, if viewed prac­ti­cal­ly as an account and a guide to the process of assist­ed dying, Last Flight Home pro­vides an infor­ma­tive, detailed and unpol­ished account of assist­ed dying that could be very use­ful to indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies in a sim­i­lar situation. 

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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