It’s not the first time I’m warning you, and it won’t be the last: Don’t believe the trailer. The latest film that deserves this precaution is the Israeli box office sensation The Farewell Party, which presents, in its truncated teaser, as a daffy retirement-home comedy with a saccharine center.
While laughs do occasionally puncture the gravity of the film’s subject matter, it’s hardly a comedy, nor is it the maudlin treacle you might expect. It would be easier to consume if it was either of these things, but the final product, in which deep melancholy trumps its sellable eccentricity, is almost too difficult to swallow. The Farewell Party is a movie that is as unbearable as it is powerful, touching on so many frayed nerves that any viewer over a certain age — and most under it —will feel more than a few uncomfortable neural pokes.
The movie is indeed set in a retirement community, among a cluster of tight-knit pensioners led by Yehezkel (Ze’ev Revach) and his wife Levana (Levana Finkelstein). Their friend Yana (Aliza Rosen) is on the precipice of losing her husband Max to a terminal illness, but the farewell parties aren’t limited to Max: The film captures the time in your life when your entire generation begins succumbs to mortality, one by drawn-out one.
When Max asks to be euthanized, and professional tinkerer Yehezkel happens to be able to create a “mercy-killing machine” to be operated by the patient, this wandering twilight ensemble finds its focus in a question that is being hotly debated in some European countries: Do we have a right to die on our own terms?
Soon enough, Yehezkel’s machine becomes a popular, if still patently illegal, option for his immediate social circle — a cottage industry blossoming in response to an endemic concern. But it’s one thing when Yehezkel’s device takes the last few painful days away from morphined strangers; it’s another when his wife, whose debilitating dementia spirals over the course of the film, asks to employ his services.
Writer-directors Tal Granit and Sharon Maymon skillfully avoid taking a moral stance on the issue themselves, but they offer compelling, emotional arguments both for and against euthanasia — which will continue among the film’s viewers long after the credits roll. Granit and Maymon have made a brave film on a number of counts; a subplot involves an elderly man discovering his homosexuality late in life, while still married to a woman. And their film is unafraid to tackle sensitive end-of-life issues with honesty and humor — not cheap gags at the expense of seniors but natural laughs emerging gracefully from decidedly ungraceful situations. A phone call supposedly from God (a wry prank from Yehezkel), a couple of police encounters that don’t go as planned, and the bold nude diorama used in the film’s poster art all contain laughs with poignant backstories — jokes with hearts that pump and bleed and break.
Behind them all, The Farewell Party is a pained portrait of people shaking off their mortal coil, and anyone who’s ever lost a parent will find those emotions flooding back to them. Granit and Maymon deserve a final bravo for resisting the temptation to sentimentalize, to respect the last moments of their characters as opportunities for poignant, unforced insights. Regardless of your views on assisted suicide, would that all of us were to die in similarly loving company, we’d have few complaints to carry to the Other Side.
THE FAREWELL PARTY. Directors: Tal Granit and Sharon Maymon; Cast: Ze’ev Revach, Levana Finkelstein, Aliza Rosen, Ilan Dar, Raffi Tavor; Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn; Rating: Not rated; in Hebrew with English subtitles. Now playing at Movies of Lake Worth, Movies of Delray and Living Room Cinemas at FAU.