Ian Thomas Malone

The right to die is sadly still a controversial issue in much of the world. For many terminally ill people, the idea of going out on your own terms is far better than the alternative, a few extra weeks spent practically comatose hooked up to all sorts of machines. Agency is not a concept that should be removed from this equation.

Blackbird handles the subject of agency quite well. Lily (Susan Sarandon) chooses to end her life on a specific day, after a long battle with ALS. She and her husband Paul (Sam Neill), invite their family for one last weekend together before Paul delivers a concoction designed to bring her suffering to an end. With a stacked supporting cast that includes Kate Winslet, Mia Wasikowska, and Rainn Wilson, you’d expect the film to tackle the subject matter with the level of grace that it deserves.

Unfortunately, Blackbird is a mess almost straight from the get-go. Director Roger Michell crafts the film like a stage play, using extensive wide shots in the majority of the film’s first half. The camera often remains fixed for full scenes, showcasing rooms of the house essentially from the perspective of a security camera. There’s some initial novelty in the idea of making the audience feel like a wallflower, but the whole approach is clunky and distracting.

Despite the talent involved, Michell essentially kneecaps his cast by restricting the audience’s access to them. You can hear the words coming out of the characters’ mouths, but often you can’t see their expressions. If he truly wanted to mirror the stage, he made the rather puzzling decision to place the audience in the back row.

Worst of all, Michell conveys the wrong message with his stagnant camera. There’s a scene between Wasikowska and Winslet early on where they’re preparing a guest room. The conversation is to some degree meant to take a back seat to their actions, possibly a commentary on mundane chores in the face of imminent tragedy. Instead, the whole sequence leaves you envious of the characters, lost in something other than this boring mess.

What makes this whole dynamic even more confusing is that Michell essentially abandons this approach halfway through. Ensemble scenes in the back half feature plenty of close-ups. It’s as if he realized that the early scenes weren’t working and decided to call an audible, without going back to fix his mistakes.

Blackbird does an absolutely terrible job of conveying the severity of Lily’s illness. There is talk of her not being able to move her right hand, though she’s shown several times to have mobility, occasionally when Sarandon’s left arm is the one left still. Anyone familiar with ALS might find that this portrayal leaves quite a lot to be desired. A scene meant to convey her illness features Lily dropping a wine glass, except the whole setup is pretty outlandish.

Lily is shown sitting in a chair eating a piece of cake off a plate on her lap, with no side table in sight. It would seem practically impossible for anyone, terminally ill or not, to eat the cake while holding a wine glass. The audience is supposed to take this moment as a sign that she should be put out of her misery, but it’s so lazy and careless that the whole sequence earns little more than an eye-roll.

The screenplay is very bad. Early on, some of the awkward small talk seems designed to capture the spirit of the moment. As the narrative meanders along, it’s clear that the mediocrity wasn’t intentional. The sloppiness grows tiresome after a while. There’s a sequence where Winslet’s Jennifer asks for gin, only to be immediately handed a glass of wine. Some of this stuff could be forgiven, errors are a part of film, but sloppiness seems to define Michell’s approach to Blackbird.

The bad writing and directing puts a burden on the actors that none of them seem particularly eager to carry. Neill and Wilson in particular look bored out of their minds, phoning in their performances. Sarandon, Wasikowska and Winslet fair a bit better, though the material doesn’t give them much to work with.

Overburdened by a terrible screenplay and sloppy filmmaking, Blackbird makes a mess out of its sensitive material. People deserve to die with dignity, a surprisingly controversial issue in this modern age. Unfortunately, this film is not a good messenger.

A film like The Blech Effect forces one to recognize the confines of the space that narratives occupy. Even documentaries that cover decades-long spans can only cover small snippets of a person’s life within a ninety-minute runtime. The impact of a documentary lies in its ability to capture the essence of its subject, not necessarily to paint a full portrait.

David Blech, once dubbed the “king of biotech,” could have been a billionaire, founding several companies within the field, including the makers of Cialis. Blech was involved with numerous controversies, eventually pleading guilty to two counts of criminal fraud, which earned him a lengthy prison sentence. Rather than be remembered as a man who helped cure cancer, Blech’s legacy is instead defined by his greed and criminal activity.

Director David Greenwald sets the film mostly in Blech’s large apartment in New York City, a luxurious space at odds with his dire financial situation. The narrative takes place before Blech served a thirty-month prison sentence. Understandably, Blech is very tense, worried about his family and the burden that his time in jail will have on his wife, left alone to care for their autistic son.

The film spends barely any time on Blech’s broader career. Greenwald is practically solely concerned with Blech being sad about having to go to jail. Blech’s gambling addiction receives a lot of attention, framing that helps paint him as fairly sympathetic. Trouble is, it’s not very interesting.

The Blech Effect spends its time throwing a lackluster pity party instead of offering any substantive insight into its subject’s career. There’s little time spent explaining biotech, leaving the impression that Blech is little more than a bad stock trader. Even the phrase “the Blech effect” isn’t really described all that well. Blech repeatedly talks about all the companies he started, never once stopping to consider how he might want to explain this shady-sounding business practice to a general audience. Anyone looking to learn more about David Blech as a person would be sorely disappointed.

What’s further puzzling is Greenwald’s efforts to garner sympathy for his subject. David is mildly likable, a father who clearly loves his son. So what? Greenwald lets Blech suggest that he’s only settling because he doesn’t have the resources to fight back without pushing back on this puzzling dynamic. The whole thing plays out like bad PR.

Greenwald essentially expects his audience to feel sympathy for a figure responsible for those annoying erectile dysfunction ads on cable television. Blech isn’t particularly remorseful, just sad. There is a fair degree of sympathy that one can extend to a figure who’s clearly an addict, but it’s hard to keep this up for an entire feature-length narrative.

To some extent, The Blech Effect might have value as a wake-up call for gambling addicts, but that idea is hampered by Blech’s singular status. David Blech has lost more money than most people will ever see in their lives. That premise could have made for an interesting documentary, but instead Greenwald spent his time panhandling for sympathy toward a disgraced, not all that remorseful, venture capitalist.