“Jack Has a Plan” - Film Review
Despite its inevitability, the subject of death makes most people uncomfortable. Even though it’s the one experience that every single living person will go through, it’s a tough topic to broach among friends and family. Death is what’s looming over all of us, and most of us don’t get to choose when life ends. Jack Tuller is one of the few people who can decide when his life will come to an end, and he has a plan. Jack Has a Plan is a documentary centered on Jack’s end-of-life decision, and it proves to be as heart-warming as it is devastating.
In the 1990s, Jack underwent a successful surgery for a brain tumor. He was told that the doctors were able to remove 90% of the tumor, and that the other 10% had shrunk to an undetectable size. After the surgery, Jack was a musician, an artist, and a real estate agent. He married a woman named Jen and spent his life surrounded by friends. When he is 55, Jack is told the tumor has returned and that his motor functions, memory, and ability to speak will deteriorate rapidly. Jack is adamant that he doesn’t want to endure chemotherapy again, and learns about California’s End of Life Option Act from his neighbor. The act allows terminally ill adults with a life expectancy of less than six months to end their life with an aid-in-dying drug. Jack enlists the help of longtime friend and filmmaker Bradley Berman to document his final days.
courtesy of Jack Has a Plan
It comes as no surprise that Jack’s decision doesn’t sit well with everyone in his life. Even on the day Jack decides to take the aid-in-dying drug, his friends and loved ones try to talk him out of it. It’s clear, however, that this decision is not one he came to lightly. Jack is choosing to die because he’s had a life full of love and he’s known happiness in a deep, profound way. It is not a decision made out of anger or fear. As Jack’s neighbor tells him, “You are not deciding to kill yourself. You are getting ahead of something.” Jack Has a Plan wants its viewers to reevaluate how they choose to spend not only the end of their days, but their life as a whole.
Jack Tuller is a stranger to most people, and will likely be a stranger to the film’s viewers. He’s semi-known to the people of San Francisco because of his real estate bus stop ads, but even those people don’t really know him. Jack Has a Plan is filled to the brim with people who have spent a portion of their lives loving Jack. It’s always difficult to create something so deeply personal, especially in a documentary format, but Jack Has a Plan excels in showing the audience the totality of this man. It’s sentimental and heartfelt, but still accessible to those who only met Jack Tuller at the beginning of the film.
Is there any good way to die? On the one hand, no. No human is ever given enough time on this planet to do all the things they desire, so no death can ever be truly good. We will always want more time to spend with the ones we love, to travel, see movies, read books, experience art. There’s simply not enough time and no good time to die. On the other hand, yes, Jack Has a Plan argues that there are ways to die that can be good, that allow people to do so with dignity and on their own terms.
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