Within the shifting, boundlessly humane documentary “Final Flight Residence,” the director Ondi Timoner filmed the ultimate days of her father’s life. Her father, Eli Timoner, selected to die at age 92 below California’s Finish of Life Possibility Act, which on the time required, amongst different steps, a 15-day ready interval after the affected person’s first oral request to a physician for aid-in-dying remedy.
“Final Flight Residence” is excess of merely a countdown of these days, however it’s that, illuminatingly. Eli is questioned by docs and counselors. Ondi and different members of the family handle logistics, akin to looking for a cup and a straw that Eli, who should take the medicine himself, will have the ability to maintain in his immobilized state. (Confined to a mattress, he has congestive coronary heart failure and continual obstructive pulmonary illness and was partly paralyzed by a stroke at 53.)
However much more than it’s a procedural, “Final Flight Residence” is a report of what Lisa Timoner, Eli’s spouse of greater than 5 a long time, calls the “unreality” of what’s taking place, as Eli winds down his life — saying goodbye to family members and buddies, usually by video name due to Covid — with a recognized closing date.
Ondi, who filmed with inconspicuous cameras that have been merely left operating, has emerged with an amazingly intimate portrait of Eli and his household, together with Ondi’s two siblings, Rachel and David Timoner, their companions and their kids. There may be even some humor. Dying date or no, Eli nonetheless wants to look at Rachel Maddow. When requested how he feels about being mic’d on a regular basis, Eli waggishly says that he doesn’t need to “cross the director.”
Close to the top, Ondi makes certain that Lisa merely spends a while quietly sitting with Eli. Rachel Timoner, a rabbi, helps him unburden lingering shames. “Final Flight” is without delay a memorial to Eli, the final of that technology of the household to die, and — nearly by the way — a philosophical argument about how loss of life could be confronted nicely.
Final Flight Residence
Not rated. Working time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters.