The room next door

Two of my friends have living wills that I know about. A living will is a written statement detailing the extent of medical treatment someone would like if no longer able to express their desires.

Specifically, neither friend would like to be kept alive in a vegetative state or death delayed if it was inevitable as a result of illness.

I pointed out that accidents happen and it is a useless document unless they always carry it with them.

The more determined of the two promptly had the words “Do not resuscitate” tattooed on her chest.

Her action may seem extrem,e but how to die concerns very many people as they age, especially in these highly uncertain times.

My friends came to mind when I saw The Room Next Door, the latest film by the internationally admired Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar. It is his first English-language film, and, like some of the very best films, is based on a novel.

What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez won the US’s 2018 National Book Award, and Almodovar’s film version took home the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival this year. It is reported that he received a record-breaking 18-minute standing ovation.

Unusually, this film sticks quite closely to the novel, which is not surprising, since there are essentially only four characters in it, two primary and two secondary. Most novels have a large cast of characters and various subplots, and the scriptwriter has to choose which one or two to concentrate on. That requires a cull of the original text and a lot of artistic licence to patch the story together again.

The novel is about dying, not in a gloomy way, but rather, in a constructive fashion that allows us to engage in the difficult contemporary debate about whether each of us should be able to choose the time of our own departure from this world if faced with a terminal illness or an incurable one.

The poignant story is utterly contemporary, and very simple. A middle-aged professional woman has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and as she gets weaker, she rejects waiting out her eventual death. She prefers to end her life when she chooses.

She asks her close friend, a prize-winning novelist, to assist her by accompanying her away for a weekend and just being in the room next door. She does not want to die alone. The dying woman will pop the hard-to-come-by pill, and the sign for her friend would be an open bedroom door.

She takes every precaution to avoid her friend's being involved in what would definitely be treated by the police as a crime since aiding and abetting a death is an offence in most countries.

Euthanasia (painless termination of life) and assisted dying are illegal in TT and many ex-British colonies, as they are in the UK, parts of Europe and the US. Muslims and Jews do not condone it, and Japan and China have no legislation at all on it. Countries seem to find legislation on this matter difficult, so even medically allowing someone to die can be a grey area. My research points to individuals staying well away from assisting anyone’s death to avoid legal jeopardy.

Most of us are passive onlookers as other people give up the ghost. We sit and hold the hands of our dear ones as they leave us, or often just miss the moment when they do.

The film, however, turns on the moment that the dying woman, Martha – played by Tilda Swinton– asks her friend Ingrid – played by Julianne Moore– to be active in the event, to the extent that she knows of the plan, which could land her in deep trouble.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, Ingrid has to change gears and deal with death itself and its impact on her. She cannot be an onlooker, but must live the dying with her friend. She finally agrees to Martha’s wish.

The look of this film is typical of Almodóvar. All his films, some of which have won Academy Awards and BAFTAs, are unique for their cinematography, melodrama, transgressive nature and always for the way he uses colour – bold primary colours in big uncompromising blocks – so that the screen might have just two or three colours at any one time – especially red, which, he said in an interview, “always appears in Spanish culture, it is also the colour of passion, blood and fire.”

His stars are always women, their characters inspired by his mother. Nobody who has seen the Oscar-winning All about My Mother will ever forget that evocation of a mother-son relationship. Penelope Cruz, who has acted in seven of his films, acknowledges his huge role in her career and his unfailing ability to spot talent.

Almodovar’s films are usually autobiographical, and this one is too. At the age of 75, he is obviously beginning to contemplate his own death, but unlike his other films, it fails to engage him and us emotionally.

For me, it reveals the highly philosophical nature of the debate for most of us. Would that it were so for uncountable others.