Director: Anthony Harvey
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Nick Nolte, Kit Le Fever

Almost four hundred years ago, English poet John Donne wrote in his famous prose work Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, "No man is an island." In the 21st century, I do think that for a large degree that that opinion is still true. Just think about it a little - unless you are a hermit that lives deep in the wilderness, you almost certainly every day interact one way or another with other people in your community or elsewhere. And for most people, getting along with people regularly is very important for a healthy mental state. Yet at the same time, I do think that most people must keep part of themselves independent. While at first glance it might seem good if everybody agreed on everything all of the time, a little more thought would soon make anyone realize that if nobody had an independent opinion or idea, humanity would many times find it difficult to make advances. If everybody was just focused on movies that were well-known, there never would be a movie review web site focused on unknown movies. Also, I think there are many aspects of life where the ultimate choice needs to be made by an individual. For example, people should have their own opinion about what occupation they would like to enter and stay with once they graduate from school. Also, people should feel free to decide whether they want to be in some sort of romantic relationship, and if they do, they should have the freedom to decide exactly what kind of person they want to be paired up with. For that matter, people should also have the right to decide what kind of diet they want to have. If they want a vegetarian or vegan diet, that's their business, even though I think nothing beats the taste of meat and dairy.

At the same time, I will admit that there are some kind of individual decisions that are way more complex and potentially troubling than deciding whether or not to eat a juicy and tasty Whopper burger. One of those decisions is whether or not one has decided whether he or she wants to live as long as possible. In other words, I am talking about touchy subjects such as suicide and euthanasia. Personally, if I were in extreme pain - mental, physical, or both - I could possibly see ending life early as a great relief. And in the past, I have seen why some people have chosen suicide or euthanasia as a kind of escape route. But I know that for many people, my opinion would seem just as wrong as what a vegan sees while I am chowing down at Burger King (while having brought my own cheese slices since I'm not going to pay an entire extra dollar for the restaurant to add its own cheese.) Some people have religious objections to the idea of ending human life early, while others feel that it is just morally wrong. It's a very touchy subject. Until my country (Canada) legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide in 2016, I remember various and heated news stories of the struggle to make these acts legal. It's no wonder then that most cinematic treatments of suicide and euthanasia have portrayed them in a quite serious and respectful manner. With suicide and euthanasia being quite delicate subjects, filmmakers simply don't want to potentially offend a mass viewing audience. Come to think about it, most films on these subjects just focus on the pain of the individual and seldom have any kind of a debate on whether the person in focus is doing the right thing or not.

But there are a few films where suicide and/or euthanasia is looked at in a more comic light. There is the Burt Reynolds movie The End, for example, though that movie still had a good degree of sensitivity. That's not what I was expecting with the euthanasia-themed comedy Grace Quigley, since it was a Golan and Globus production from Cannon Films. But the idea of the Go-Go boys putting their unsubtle touch on a comedic look at euthanasia was irresistible to me. The title figure (played by Katharine Hepburn, On Golden Pond) is a New York City resident who is tiring of life. Her husband died some time ago, she barely gets by on her social security allowance, and she is about to get evicted from her apartment suite by her no-good landlord, all of which is leaving her with thoughts of suicide. But before the time comes where she takes her life or is kicked out of her home, Grace witnesses her landlord getting shot and killed by a shabby hitman by the name of Seymour Flint (Nick Nolte, 48 Hours). Seymour doesn't know at that time that Grace has witnessed him, but Grace in short time finds out due to unexpected circumstances where to locate Seymour if she needs to. It turns out she decides to contact him directly, and asks him to kill her, offering him money to do so. Naturally, Seymour doesn't quite know how to handle this at first, but he eventually tells her his exorbitant fee for doing the duty. Grace then makes an arrangement for one of her equally tired of life elderly friends to pay Seymour for knocking off himself and Grace. But as it turns out, in short notice Grace and Seymour are together running a business where Seymour knocks off (for a fee) any elderly person who wants to die. All this starts to give Grace a new lease on life, but complications for her and Seymour eventually start to pop up.

I had to admit that when I sat down to watch Grace Quigley, its plot description I had earlier learned already had me form an objection to what I was going to see. No, it wasn't the idea of setting up a business to help elderly people commit suicide. Rather, it was the idea that there would be an incredible number of elderly people wanting to be knocked off. Are there some elderly people who would go for this? I am sure there would be some, but certainly not to the extent the movie suggests. Most people, even those faced with many huge issues, want to live until the very end. Despite the movie having the opposite viewpoint I had, it might have been palatable with enough care and thought to have worked. Good humor might have made the story so absurd that I wouldn't take it seriously. There is certainly a big attempt by the makers of this movie to make it a pitch-black dark comedy, but it fails completely. There are "comic" moments that could have worked with the right timing and delivery, such as a subplot about Seymour regularly going to a psychiatrist (Chip Zien, All My Children), and another subplot concerning Seymour's building relationship with his hooker girlfriend Muriel (Kit Le Fever), but the movie can't seem to find any fresh angles or material to lift these moments above tiredness and lack of imagination. You'll guess how these moments lamely play out even before they actually unfold in front of you. There are comic moments that seem to come out of the blue from another kind of comedy, such as when there's a car chase through New York involving several hearses. Then there are "comic" moments that feel, well, just plain wrong. There's one scene where Grace and Seymour have four clients who all want to die, so they put them in a room where automobile exhaust from the garage is piped in. As the room starts filling with the gas, the four clients are so happy death is coming that they gather at the piano and start to sing When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. Really.

Another example of this is earlier when the suicidal clients hold a party to welcome Seymour and sing For He's A Jolly Good Fellow to him. When inappropriate gags like that last example came up every so often, I couldn't help but wonder what screenwriter A. Martin Zweiback was thinking of as he hunted and pecked on his typewriter. Actually, I think that director Anthony Harvey (Eagle's Wing) is more to blame for the attempt to make the movie's dark comic touches to work. I guess the misguided scenes could have worked with (extremely) careful planning and skill - any subject has the potential to be funny in the right hands. Instead, the execution of the comedy (even with the more tasteful gags) feels extremely clunky, lacking grace (even when Grace herself is in a scene) or enough absurdness to make it palatable, resulting in absolutely no laughs or smiles. Harvey even blows it when it comes to typical directorial tasks. The opening New York City credits sequence starts in the winter, suddenly cuts to the spring, then cuts back to the winter, and then returns to the spring - for no reason at all except maybe for sheer incompetence and/or for the fact reports I unearthed during my reseach told of an extremely troubled shoot, plus subsequent reshoots. Also, establishing shots are almost non-existent, and almost all scenes shot in interiors have the camera jammed extremely closely to the characters' faces so we have no sense of their internal environments (though oddly we do barely see in one shot that Seymour has the arcade game Zaxxon in his small apartment.) Scenes where characters make important declarations suddenly are cut off before the other parties in the scene have a chance to show some sort of reaction. All this is bad enough, but what makes it even worse is that despite only having a running time of about 87 minutes, Grace Quigley drags on and on at an incredibly slow speed. Despite its subject matter, there is pretty much no life given when things attempt to become darkly comic, or for the more serious scenes for that matter. Even the aforementioned hearse chase sequence doesn't go by quicker than first gear.

In fairness to Zweiback and Harvey, there are a few scattered moments that manage to shine through that indicate the premise could have worked. There's one scene with an elderly client (William Duell, A Stranger Is Watching) has a lengthy monologue said to Seymour as to why he wants to die, and while the scene isn't comic at all, it's very well done when seen in the dramatic light that's placed on it. There are a few other serious moments that do have some bite to them, and suggest that a more serious viewpoint might have been the way to go. Other than those few moments, any in-depth look into the characters is simply not there. We learn Seymour was in Vietnam, but not much else, such as why he became a hitman, why he killed Grace's landlord, and what he sees in his girlfriend Muriel. Grace on the other hand alludes to why she wants to be knocked off and later why she decides to change her mind and keep living. But such things were simply not looked at closely enough for my needs. The blame for the weak characters doesn't fall in any part due to the efforts by Katharine Hepburn and Nick Nolte in the lead roles. Although you can tell that they have a little sense that they are in somewhat over their heads, they do make a great effort to show in a believable manner the emotions their characters have to express - confusion, anger, sympathy, you name it. When they are paired up together and engage in verbal sparring, they generate enough chemistry so that you can almost forget their weak characters and dialogue, as well as the general slipshod feel of the rest of the enterprise. Both actors fortunately managed to redeem themselves in projects that came after Grace Quigley, which is a good thing, because from their experiences with the movie they must have felt at the time they fell from grace.

(Posted October 10, 2024)