Plan 75 (Hayakawa, 2022): Birkbeck Cinema, 6pm
Birkbeck Cinema introduction:
The coincidence of the UK crisis in public funding with the Assisted Dying Bill prompts this screening of Plan 75. Produced by the famed melodrama auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda and directed by a woman, Chie Hayakawa, Plan 75 is set in a very contemporary Japan, beset by an aging population with minimal state support. (Real-life Japan has some of the rich world’s highest rates of senior poverty, particularly among single women.) The consequence is a new state venture, in which all citizens of 75 and over are offered financially-incentivized euthanasia. The film will be introduced by Birkbeck Honorary Research Fellow Mandy Merck, and you are invited to discuss it afterwards with her and Birkbeck Professor Emerita Lynne Segal, author of Out of Time: The Pleasures and Perils of Aging.
Guardian review:
This strange, melancholy film from Japan effectively makes the (unfashionable) case against euthanasia: that old people won’t want to be a bother or appear selfish and so will feel pressured into accepting state medicide. We see older characters retired from jobs which they really need, people without access to welfare and housing, old people who are desperately lonely and who even crave the Plan 75 helpline as someone to talk to. But the movie creates dissident moments: a young employee of Plan 75 realises that one applicant is his elderly uncle, while a Plan 75 call centre operative meets an old lady in person and takes her for an evening’s bowling, and realises that her colleagues are being trained in steering callers away from the last-minute change of heart which is the customer’s theoretical right. This is a poignant and weird film.
Peter Bradshaw
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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