Film Me Before You

[Shale]

Me Before You
DVD Blurb By Shale
December 13, 2017

This movie played in theater June 2016 but I found the DVD while looking for a more current release. I didn’t really notice it at the time of release. It was between Captain America Civil War and X-Men Apocalypse in addition to me taking a trans-Atlantic cruise, moving and hand surgery. It is a low budget English romantic- drama adapted from a 2012 novel of the same name by Jojo Moyes, who also wrote the screenplay.

The movie is about a young man Will Traynor (Sam Claflin) who was a successful businessman until a motorcycle accident left him paralyzed from the neck down. He is living with his well-to-do parents who put an ad for a caregiver, which is answered by a recently laid off young woman Louisa Clark (Emilia Clarke).

Will has attitude, which most anyone can understand of a 30-something, very active guy being reduced to a wheelchair that he can operate with the remaining use of his right hand. No walking, no more sports, no more wiping his own ass – total care by his male nurse, Nathan (Stephen Peacocke). Lou gets the job of watching Will while Nathan is off during the day and her outgoing exuberance is met with Will’s gloomy disdain.

Lou Shave’s Will

But, you know he will come around and start indulging Lou’s efforts to cheer him up and things go along nicely until Lou learns that Will had a timetable set with his parents that in six months he would go to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland for assisted suicide. This puts a downer on Lou’s budding romantic thots with Will and she attempts to dissuade him from that plan.

The movie is thot provoking and entertaining and I would recommend it for anyone into more thotful fare than the usual fighting and blowing up stuff. The movie did well at the box office, worldwide making $207 million on a $20 million cost. The aggregate critics at Rotten Tomatoes only gave it a 57% Fresh but 73% of audiences liked it. The critics consensus was, "Me Before You benefits from Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin's alluring chemistry, although it isn't enough to compensate for its clumsy treatment of a sensitive subject."

Oh, there was also a controversy from ppl in disability rights movements that it gives a message that ppl with severe disabilities like quadriplegia are better off dead and feels the film advocates suicide. Activists from Not Dead Yet in the US staged protests in many major cities. However, I found that it gave good rationale for a quadriplegic to determine whether his life was worth continuing. Each of us has our own ideas about quality of life versus quantity of existing (I know what mine is) and it is a very personal decision that should be respected. I have cared for quadriplegics as an Aide in nursing homes and have some idea of their lives. In the U.S. it is almost impossible to get a legal, humane, assisted suicide if you so desire so it is a moot point to discuss.

I will leave you with this opinion expressed by Rachelle Friedman, a 30-year-old quadriplegic in Cosmopolitan, June 9, 2016

"My main concern before seeing the movie was that Will was going to kill himself at the end of it to lift a 'burden' from his family … which would have bothered me because disabled people are not a burden - but it turned out that his decision had nothing to do with them, it was for him. And while I disagree with his choice, I understand why he felt the way he felt, and I ultimately think people have the right to choose assisted suicide (I'm sure I'll get a lot of flack for saying that, but I don't think it's wrong). What people need to realize is that Will was in tremendous pain. There was one line in the movie that may have gone in one ear and out the other for some people, but it really resonated with me - the nurse mentioned to Louisa how sometimes Will would be awake screaming at night because he was in so much agony.

Nerve pain is something that I also experience, which a lot of people don't realize. Just because I'm paralyzed doesn't mean that my body doesn't feel anything. Sometimes, my whole body feels like it's on fire, like pins and needles, bee stings; it's as if your foot were painfully asleep but it's your entire body. That can cause some serious depression. Some of the people who are in chairs who have an opinion about Will's experience don't feel nerve pain at all and I don't think they fully understand his experience. I wish the movie showed his suffering. It touched on it, but I think had it shown more, those scenes would have been imprinted on people's brains and maybe they would have felt differently about the ending.”

 

[Shale]

I wrote this essay long before Assisted Suicide or even "Do Not Resuscitate" orders was a consideration

Mark's Coming of Age
By Shale
July 1990
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New Orleans, 1980

It was just last month that I first met Mark. We only spent the day together but it feels like we knew each other longer. Maybe it was the intensity of one-to-one that day I stayed with him.
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I was working for a respite care agency, staying in peoples' homes and caring for their handicapped dependents while they got away for a while. And so it was that I met Mark, 19 years old and wasting away with muscular dystrophy. His only mobility was the electric wheelchair to which he was confined and which he could still operate with the remaining motion of one hand. Otherwise, he had to be lifted in and out of the chair, the bed, and onto the toilet. He had to be bathed and fed by others. His mother usually provided this personal care and on the day that I stayed with him, feeding was the only task required. On the only occasion that I had to place his penis in a urinal, I gathered that he was quite self-conscious of having others, or at least strangers, attend to these personal needs. Although Mark lived with his condition of personal dependence on a daily basis, he was still a self-conscious teenager.
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We talked a lot that day. He told me of the progression of his disease, how it started at age 7 and how crutches gave way to a wheelchair by age 13. On the wall was a photo of Mark at about that age, looking quite the average, smiling, exuberant 13-year-old, except for the almost unnoticed handles of a wheelchair at the edge of the picture. The tragedy of it struck me for a moment, knowing the life of an active boy had been missed, but Mark was alive, here in his chair so I didn't dwell on what could have been.
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Mark was a young man with vulnerabilities of the heart. The young woman who had captured his fancy lived in another city and they only saw each other once a year at a summer camp for the physically disabled. Mark was very preoccupied with thoughts of this girl, as it was nearing the time for summer camp. …
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That was last month. Mark never made it to camp. I was called on this overnight job because he was seriously ill and his mother needed some rest. It was an unusual emergency assignment. Normally, when I stayed at peoples' homes it was for the primary care giver to get away. This time the mother would be at home in her bedroom while I stayed the night with Mark.
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Mark had been bedridden for several days and was much thinner than when I saw him last month. His mother asked if he remembered me, and he feebly said yes, showing little attachment to his surroundings. He hadn't been eating or drinking and I was shown the water and the soda, which I was to try to get him to drink. His mother attempted cheerfulness, but the gravity of the situation was evident, as well as its toll on her. She went to her room and I sat by Mark's bed.
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He was not the young man of a month past. Youth is measured physically by health and vitality, and not to be found in this emaciated nonfunctioning body. It is also measured by naiveté and innocence. Mark had experienced too much pain in his 19 years and somehow I felt he was now aware of his mortality, which is not the usual adolescent awareness.
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We didn't converse that night. Mark was uncomfortable, continuously asking to be moved. When I changed his position it would be just a few minutes before he would complain again. I offered him liquids several times and he refused to drink, with a conscious determination.
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I sometimes feel guilty for being so irritated throughout the night with Mark's constant demands to be moved. I had not slept that day and was not prepared to stay up all night. Was this what his mother had been living with for more than a week? Finally the demands came less frequently and Mark went to sleep. I must have had a couple of hours of sleep on the pallet on the floor next to his bed before being awakened at 4:30 a.m.
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Mark was mumbling incoherently and I asked through the darkness, "Mark, are you alright?"
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He simply said, "Are you kidding?"
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I was immediately aware of both the inanity of my question and the biting sarcasm in his. Nineteen years old and dying from muscular dystrophy, and I ask if he's alright.
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I turned on the light and saw that Mark was sweating profusely. The bed was already soaked. He was dehydrated and in shock, and most probably dying. I woke up his mother. She went to his side, held his hand and stroked his head, reassuring him and perhaps herself that this was the right course.
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I asked if she wanted me to call Fire/Rescue. Almost imperceptively, as if it were a thought not spoken, she said, "I don't want them to resuscitate him." I understood.
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I understood why Mark was still at home with his deteriorating condition. I understood his refusal to eat and drink, and although I was not a part of the private affairs of this family, I understood that Mark and his mother had anticipated this moment.
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I sat on the bed by Mark and held his hand while his mother went to call his father. Mark was still vocalizing weakly, incoherently, and then he stopped. With one spasm of the chest it was over. Mark lay still on the bed, eyes open, pupils dilated.
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Death has been relegated to professionals for so long in our society that it is rare to encounter it quietly in the comforting surroundings of home. We've even come to require an authority to pronounce someone dead, but it was my understanding that dilated pupils meant that brain function had ceased. Mark's dead stare was disquieting, so I stroked his eyelids gently with my fingers, as seen in countless dramas on the screen. It's not that easy. They refused to stay closed, betraying the illusion that a lifeless body is peacefully asleep..

I went to Mark's mother and told her that he had died. We went back to his bed. Were we sure? It's a guessing game with modern technology. At what point is it impossible for someone playing God with a machine to resurrect a person who's already gone through the ordeal of passing on. We waited five minutes, then I called the police to report a death after lingering illness. I described the signs of death and they agreed that only the Coroner would be sent. Mark's father arrived, so I left this family for a few minutes alone before the authorities came.
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Guilt is a pervasive emotion that slips around the edges of rational thought. I know that the events of this story progressed to the only reasonable conclusion, but now and then I realize that we sometimes make decisions that involve the life or death of another. I feel the decisions here were right and ultimately were made by Mark's mother with my support.
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She was a mother who made a tough decision, and I hope she knows she decided correctly whenever a feeling of guilt slips through. I'm just thankful that she was there, for I could not have made that decision on my own, and would have been required to call 911 as soon as I saw Mark in shock. (This was before "Do Not Resuscitate" orders were a legal option). They probably would have made it in time to disrupt the natural order of things and there is no telling how long Mark's feeble, wasted body would have suffered the indignities of assault before his degenerative disease finally, mercifully silenced his heart.