John Badham on WHOSE LIFE IS IT ANYWAY?
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- Опубліковано 23 сер 2024
- John Badham explores the difficulties in adapting a hit play to the screen whose protagonist, paralyzed from the neck down, is bedridden for the entire story, fighting his doctors for the right to die. Richard Dreyfuss stars, in a role Ian McShane played in‚ a 1972‚ telefilm and which both Tom Conti and Mary Tyler Moore(!) played on Broadway.
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Great Flim. I bought the DVD from Amazon over ten year's ago used for $60.00 plus Tax and Shipping. The DVD 📀 still has the rental place which went out of business. Dracula and Whose Life Is It Anyway are my favorite John Badham Movies.
The look of this film is seared in my mind from seeing it as a child in the '80s. That soft, clear light coming in from the sides. It's like compassion in lighting form. But, no, this was not Cassavetes's last performance. He went on to act in several films, including his own masterpiece, LOVE STREAMS.
I love this movie. Very moving with great performances from the whole cast.
I saw this in a little local last-run theater in my neighborhood when it first came and was just knocked out by it. Despite its subject it is not entirely depressing. I thought the ending was appropriately ambiguous as whether he would change his mind and decide to live. Nowadays that sort of lingering unanswered question might irritate the modern moviegoer but it seemed totally right to end it on that note and allow the audience to speclate and complete the movie. I would hope he altered his initial desire to die and go on living, but I understand that someone whose crreativity is manifested in a physical form like painting or sculpting that it would be agony to lose that ability while the creative spark still flickers in the mind. It has to be an endless torment. Richard Dreyfuss is another one of those actors who is always good even when the movie isn't.
It is on a very short list of films that I believe is fundamentally important in examining life and it's meaningfulness, and in what proves to be the most bitter of ironies, it's meaninglessness.
The individual, that is the person who is alone in a city of millions arrond them, is under the yoke of societal presumptions. One of these is that the individual's fate is determined by the normative, the law's of society. Who controls the right to live or die, and by what authority does a state criminalize suicide? And what responsibility does a state have to individuals, conversely, an individual to a state? These are profoundly important questions.
Ken Harrison is a keystone character in our evaluation. He is full of genius, wit, life, lust, and his engagement with the world around him through his talents. In one of the most gutting scenes he reasons with the judge on his loss of that engagement when he details how the memory of his old life clashes with his disability in such an intolerable manner that he is tortured by the sight of beauty. For example: the presence of a women, for him the greatest beauty, reminds him of his love, respect, and passion for living, and being alive, which for Ken is his art and his expression of life.
I am afraid of this going out of print. So if you can lay hands on a copy, do so.
It wasn't the "final performance" of John Cassavetes, John. He starred in Tempest the following year, and four more feature films (incl. Love Streams with his wife Gina Rowlands) up until 1985, and died in 1989. I do like the Dreyfuss-Cassavetes casting juxtaposition. Two strong male leads going at it.
Good movie
yo he visto esta pelicula con diferentes grupos de alumnos cuando hablamos del tema eutanasia, encarnizamiento terapeutico, derechos humanos: escelente pelicula
que alguien suba esta pelicula en español por favor es fabulosa.
Que en el año 1981 en EEUU se realizara este excelente trabajo sobre un tema tan complejo y sensible es para quitarse el sombrero. Quedé impactado cuando la ví hace unos 3-4 años. Recomendable a todo aquel que se plantee dudas en esta vida acerca de algo tan obvio: nadie mejor que uno mismo para decidir sobre su vida. Un abrazo. La película está editada en español y en formato DVD se puede conseguir.
No. Buy the flim DVD used for $60. Like I did.
The most depressing movie I have ever seen.