Oh Al Pacino, how I’ve missed you. I don’t think Pacino has made a good movie since the last time he partnered with HBO. Don’t confuse the last few sentences to mean that Al Pacino has returned to the days of “The Godfather” and “Dog Day Afternoon”, that’s actually just the opposite. Despite Al Pacino’s best efforts to return to acting he’s come just shy of making it.
I think the make-up department for the Barry Levinson directed “You Don’t Know Jack” should get most of the credit for making Pacino’s performance resemble anything of the life of Jack Kevorkian. He obviously had prosthetic ears. He got a little dye job, but nevertheless it was obviously Al Pacino. If anything all he did was reinhabit the body of Michael Corleone in “The Godfather: Part III.” I think he might have even worn the same cardigan in both films.
I’ll tell you who was amazing, Brenda Vaccaro as Kevorkian’s sister Margot Janus. I’ll be honest, I did not recognize her from anything else. I even looked up her IMDB profile and couldn’t place her. She’s acted in mostly television in her nearly fifty year career. I’m embarrassed because she was brilliant. I’m sure a lot of other people recognized her but I didn’t. I think though this will be a good role to help her get a lot more high profile gigs.
I guess I should talk a little about the movie. Everyone knows the story of Jack Kevorkian. If you don’t I’m sad for you. The film follows Kevorkian from his first assisted suicide through to his last. There isn’t a specific focus on each of the 130 deaths but the journey is documented. Most of the focus of the film is on the legal battle between him and the state of Michigan.
Although I was just a teenager during most of this I have a memory of some of this news as it happened. So I can say that I knew of Jack Kevorkian. Did I know Jack? Well no and the film title implies that none of us really do. So it set out to educate us. The only thing I really learned about Jack was that he was an egotist.
Early in the film he was empathetic to the suffering of his patients but as the film progressed it seemed to be more about him beating the courts and showcasing his brilliance. It was about him being a martyr and proving to everyone that he was right. He seemed to lose his compassion. Even going so far as to put one of his patients through a very undignified and embarrassing death just to conserve a lethal gas that he could use on another patient.
He was callous and manipulative. He used friends like medical equipment: they were nothing more than a means to an end. His ego got him into the euthanasia business and his ego took him out. He had to defend himself because he was the only one smart enough to do it. Or so he thought and the result was jail time.
The film was well directed and smart. I don’t think Levinson took a stand on either Kevorkian or Michigan’s side. Levinson seemed very much on the side of the sick and injured. Unlike Kevorkian he never forgot who they were fighting for.
I think this movie further proves that HBO is the best place to go if you want to make films to get people talking about important issues. This movie would never have shown in theaters. I don’t even think it would play well on DVD. It’s a TV movie with a feature film cast and high production value but it also talks about an issue that we should talk more about. It’s even been in the news recently.
It’s worth a view if you catch it on HBO but I wouldn’t go searching for it. So close Al, yet so far. Maybe next time.
