Both an investigative journalism piece and a first-person perspective, “Life After” derives its strength from clashing these two elements together and finding its story in the tension between them. Filmmaker Reid Davenport sets out to find what happened to Elizabeth Bouvia, a disabled Californian woman who demanded the right to terminate her own life in 1983. Adding his own personal perspective as a filmmaker living with disability, Davenport weaves an engrossing, moving and most importantly confrontational movie about the right to die and disability justice.
Davenport’s quest to find out what happened to Bouvia comes from his hope that she is still alive and somehow lived a long and happy life. The media presented her as someone who thought of herself as a burden and of her life as worthless. Davenport wants to correct that narrative and give her dignity and worth to all people living with disabilities who are discarded by society and medical institutions.
His investigation expands to include Jerika Bolen, a Wisconsin teenager who in 2016 was encouraged by her family and community to end her life at the very young age of 14. That section of the film is disturbing because the people around Bolen are shown celebrating her death. The media covers it as a positive outcome: a community coming together to throw a big send-off party to a teenager whose life is deemed not worth living because of her disability. Only Davenport’s commentary shows us how twisted the whole situation is. He forces the audience to contend with what has been sold as a happy and celebratory occasion.
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In the present, Davenport travels to Canada to meet Michal Kaliszan. Diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, which causes progressive muscle weakness, he needs constant care. After the death of his mother, who was his primary carer, he faces a dilemma. The state cannot offer the same level of care and even though he’s gainfully employed as a computer programmer, he can’t afford to fully hire someone to take care of him. Instead, he considers Medical Aid in Dying (MAID), a Canadian government program that allows people to terminate their own lives. Davenport shows that this “choice” wasn’t really Kaliszan’s, but rather forced on him by a crumbling healthcare system and a government bureaucracy that prefers to kill its citizens rather than help them live with dignity.
Back home in America, Davenport presents the case of Michael Hickson, a quadriplegic who was denied medical care by his doctors. As his wife Melissa bluntly proclaims to Davenport, her husband was murdered. Presenting medical professionals as an enemy to disabled people might be controversial. They are used to being healers, which sometimes translates into wanting to fix their patients. And when they can’t fix someone, they are quick to discard. This is especially harmful to disabled people who are told by others — mostly medical professionals — that their condition constitutes a life sentence of misery. As presented by Davenport, those healers don’t realize that being disabled is not a death sentence to people who have lived that experience all their lives.
“I Didn’t See You There” director Davenport is the ideal person to share his own story. He’s not afraid of talking about times of despair, but also others of hope and community. While the film may feel one-sided and only from this particular viewpoint, that’s necessary and as it should be. As Davenport proves, other viewpoints have been heard for far too long and people who hold those opinions are still making the laws and informing the societal traditions that govern disabled people’s lives.
Elizabeth Bouvia’s story becomes the sharp framework used by Davenport for his fervent and generous rallying cry for people with disabilities to be in control of their lives. ”Life After” empathetically and methodically shows the fallacy of assisted suicide as a choice for disabled people, it’s instead a result of flailing healthcare, strapped-for-resources medical institutions and the failure of governments to protect their citizens. Davenport educates and boldly confronts long-held beliefs in an effort to be in control of his own life and stand up for his community.