A Killing, or a Mercy?
by Julia M. Klein
APRIL 22, 2010 TAGS:
Near the end of You Don’t Know Jack, a gripping new HBO film that premieres Saturday night, a local newscaster confronts Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s longtime attorney.
“There are those who would say … ‘Right message, wrong messenger,’” she suggests.
The lawyer snaps back: “And who is the right messenger?”
That pithy exchange nicely sums up both the style and point of view of this not-quite-biopic of the Michigan pathologist who came to be known as “Dr. Death.” Directed by Oscar-winner Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Avalon), and starring another Oscar winner, Al Pacino, You Don’t Know Jack presents both an indelible warts-and-all portrait of Kevorkian and a convincing endorsement of physician-assisted suicide.
The film contains little prologue or filler. It immerses viewers immediately in Kevorkian’s initial attempts to help patients suffering from painful, incapacitating, terminal ailments, such as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, pancreatic cancer and Alzheimer’s, end their lives. There are no flashbacks showing the doctor, who eventually claimed to have assisted 130 suicides, as a child or young man. But the screenplay gives us an early indication, later explained, that Kevorkian’s chief motivation for his law-and-custom-defying actions was regret at having stood by helplessly as his mother endured a prolonged, excruciating death.
The opposition to euthanasia is embodied by an Oakland County, Michigan, prosecutor who hounds Kevorkian with repeated trials and investigations, and raucous, chanting protestors, who cite both disability rights and religious concerns and brand him a “serial killer.” Kevorkian, whose medical license was yanked for his actions, denounces his enemies as being in thrall to “religious dogma,” perhaps too facile a dismissal of the complex issues posed by end-of-life care. But the film’s sympathies, echoing those of the juries that repeatedly dismissed charges against Kevorkian, are clear.
You Don’t Know Jack doesn’t flinch from showing the occasional crudeness of the doctor’s improvisatory methods, from his “Mercitron” machine to his administering of poison gas to a man with a plastic box secured around his head. But its greatest strength is its acute depiction of Kevorkian himself -- as an unlikely amalgam of zealotry, moral courage, arrogance and bullying self-righteousness.
When his sister Margo (Brenda Vaccaro) reveals that her daughter has mistakenly paid a bill by check instead of cash, leaving an unfortunate paper trail, Kevorkian explodes in public, loudly denouncing them as “stupid” and causing a family rift neither sibling can really afford. When a Hemlock Society leader (Susan Sarandon) withdraws the offer of her home as the site of a mercy-killing, he hangs up on her, imperiling a likely alliance. Sincerely compassionate to his patients, he is too often unpleasant to his small, and shrinking, circle of friends.
At times, Kevorkian’s utter charmlessness almost has a charm of its own – at least as Pacino, using a quirky, Canadian-sounding accent, portrays him. This man may be a raging social misfit, but he takes no money for his services, and, despite his age, is willing to go on a hunger strike rather than pay what he considers outrageous bail. Something of a polymath, he adores Bach, plays the flute, and paints macabre, blood-drenched portraits that help finance his cause.
But Kevorkian is not exactly an appealing dinner guest, having no truck with either social niceties (he complains constantly about food) or modesty, false or otherwise. He compares himself to Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Galileo and John Proctor in Arthur Miller’s play about the Salem witch trials, The Crucible, parts of which he recites from memory. His fatal flaw – which ultimately helps lands him in prison, for eight years – is his inability to heed even well-meant advice, including that of his flamboyant, self-promoting pro bono attorney, Geoffrey Fieger (Danny Huston). At his 1999 murder trial, with everything on the line, the legally naïve doctor insists on representing himself.
The verisimilitude of You Don’t Know Jack is heightened by its use of archival footage of both actual Kevorkian patients and news personalities such as Barbara Walters and Mike Wallace, cleverly spliced with images of Pacino. With abundant close-ups, quick cuts, juxtapositions of color and black-and-white, and Levinson’s characteristic bleached-out visuals and ironic use of music, the film’s self-conscious style is initially distracting. But Adam Mazer’s economical screenplay and Pacino’s powerhouse performance soon become engrossing.
The supporting performances are equally strong. Sarandon, as Janet Good, manages to turn her relationship with Kevorkian into a bittersweet almost-love story. She gets closer to him than anyone. John Goodman plays Neal Nicol, the medical technician who became the doctor’s friend and assistant, with a winning mix of devotion and detachment. (The film is based in part on Nicol’s 2006 book, co-authored with Harry Wylie, Between the Dying and the Dead: Dr. Jack Kevorkian's Life and the Battle to Legalize Euthanasia.)
The film ends with Dr. Kevorkian in prison, a martyr to his cause. The real-life doctor, now 81 and suffering from hepatitis C, was released from prison in 2007. The issue of physician-assisted suicide remains unsettled and controversial, with the practice legal only in Oregon, Washington State and, most recently, Montana. Judging from recent television interviews, Kevorkian seems unrepentant and as convinced of his own rightness as ever -- no surprise to anyone who’s seen You Don’t Know Jack.
Julia M. Klein is a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia and a contributing editor at Columbia Journalism Review.
“There are those who would say … ‘Right message, wrong messenger,’” she suggests.
The lawyer snaps back: “And who is the right messenger?”
That pithy exchange nicely sums up both the style and point of view of this not-quite-biopic of the Michigan pathologist who came to be known as “Dr. Death.” Directed by Oscar-winner Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Avalon), and starring another Oscar winner, Al Pacino, You Don’t Know Jack presents both an indelible warts-and-all portrait of Kevorkian and a convincing endorsement of physician-assisted suicide. The film contains little prologue or filler. It immerses viewers immediately in Kevorkian’s initial attempts to help patients suffering from painful, incapacitating, terminal ailments, such as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, pancreatic cancer and Alzheimer’s, end their lives. There are no flashbacks showing the doctor, who eventually claimed to have assisted 130 suicides, as a child or young man. But the screenplay gives us an early indication, later explained, that Kevorkian’s chief motivation for his law-and-custom-defying actions was regret at having stood by helplessly as his mother endured a prolonged, excruciating death.
The opposition to euthanasia is embodied by an Oakland County, Michigan, prosecutor who hounds Kevorkian with repeated trials and investigations, and raucous, chanting protestors, who cite both disability rights and religious concerns and brand him a “serial killer.” Kevorkian, whose medical license was yanked for his actions, denounces his enemies as being in thrall to “religious dogma,” perhaps too facile a dismissal of the complex issues posed by end-of-life care. But the film’s sympathies, echoing those of the juries that repeatedly dismissed charges against Kevorkian, are clear.
You Don’t Know Jack doesn’t flinch from showing the occasional crudeness of the doctor’s improvisatory methods, from his “Mercitron” machine to his administering of poison gas to a man with a plastic box secured around his head. But its greatest strength is its acute depiction of Kevorkian himself -- as an unlikely amalgam of zealotry, moral courage, arrogance and bullying self-righteousness.
When his sister Margo (Brenda Vaccaro) reveals that her daughter has mistakenly paid a bill by check instead of cash, leaving an unfortunate paper trail, Kevorkian explodes in public, loudly denouncing them as “stupid” and causing a family rift neither sibling can really afford. When a Hemlock Society leader (Susan Sarandon) withdraws the offer of her home as the site of a mercy-killing, he hangs up on her, imperiling a likely alliance. Sincerely compassionate to his patients, he is too often unpleasant to his small, and shrinking, circle of friends.
At times, Kevorkian’s utter charmlessness almost has a charm of its own – at least as Pacino, using a quirky, Canadian-sounding accent, portrays him. This man may be a raging social misfit, but he takes no money for his services, and, despite his age, is willing to go on a hunger strike rather than pay what he considers outrageous bail. Something of a polymath, he adores Bach, plays the flute, and paints macabre, blood-drenched portraits that help finance his cause.
But Kevorkian is not exactly an appealing dinner guest, having no truck with either social niceties (he complains constantly about food) or modesty, false or otherwise. He compares himself to Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Galileo and John Proctor in Arthur Miller’s play about the Salem witch trials, The Crucible, parts of which he recites from memory. His fatal flaw – which ultimately helps lands him in prison, for eight years – is his inability to heed even well-meant advice, including that of his flamboyant, self-promoting pro bono attorney, Geoffrey Fieger (Danny Huston). At his 1999 murder trial, with everything on the line, the legally naïve doctor insists on representing himself.
The verisimilitude of You Don’t Know Jack is heightened by its use of archival footage of both actual Kevorkian patients and news personalities such as Barbara Walters and Mike Wallace, cleverly spliced with images of Pacino. With abundant close-ups, quick cuts, juxtapositions of color and black-and-white, and Levinson’s characteristic bleached-out visuals and ironic use of music, the film’s self-conscious style is initially distracting. But Adam Mazer’s economical screenplay and Pacino’s powerhouse performance soon become engrossing. The supporting performances are equally strong. Sarandon, as Janet Good, manages to turn her relationship with Kevorkian into a bittersweet almost-love story. She gets closer to him than anyone. John Goodman plays Neal Nicol, the medical technician who became the doctor’s friend and assistant, with a winning mix of devotion and detachment. (The film is based in part on Nicol’s 2006 book, co-authored with Harry Wylie, Between the Dying and the Dead: Dr. Jack Kevorkian's Life and the Battle to Legalize Euthanasia.)
The film ends with Dr. Kevorkian in prison, a martyr to his cause. The real-life doctor, now 81 and suffering from hepatitis C, was released from prison in 2007. The issue of physician-assisted suicide remains unsettled and controversial, with the practice legal only in Oregon, Washington State and, most recently, Montana. Judging from recent television interviews, Kevorkian seems unrepentant and as convinced of his own rightness as ever -- no surprise to anyone who’s seen You Don’t Know Jack.
Julia M. Klein is a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia and a contributing editor at Columbia Journalism Review.
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