2022 Directed by Chie Hayakawa
In a Japan of the near future, the government program Plan 75 encourages senior citizens to be voluntarily euthanized to remedy a super-aged society. An elderly woman whose means of survival are vanishing, a pragmatic Plan 75 salesman, and a young Filipino laborer face choices of life and death.
岁月自珍, 七五计划, Pla 75, PLAN 75, 플랜 75, Plano 75, วันเลือกตาย, 75終生計劃, 七五計劃
Since a lot of people are missing this very important context for the film based on the Letterboxd reviews: in 2016, a man who used to work at a care home for the disabled entered during the night and murdered 19 people, wounding 26 more. The motive came from their time working at the facility, fostering a belief he found that the disabled and older people living there were a burden that needed to be dealt with.
The opening scene appears to be a direct reference to this moment, and sets the tone for a film confronting how Japan approaches, compartmentalizes and ‘deals’ with those considered a burden to society, particularly as Japan’s population rapidly ages. It makes this a…
On July 26, 2016, a 26-year-old ex-employee of a Japanese care home for intellectually and mentally disabled people broke into his former place of work and stabbed 19 defenseless patients to death in their beds. Believing his massacre to be a kind of mercy for his victims — and a noble sacrifice for the benefit of the entire nation — the killer wrote that he envisioned “a world where a person with multiple disabilities can be euthanized, with an agreement from their guardians, when it is difficult for the person to carry out household and social activities.”
The killer claimed that doing so was a necessary step to protect the economy of the world’s most rapidly aging country; an economy…
My first official movie of #TIFF22 is Chie Hayakawa’s PLAN 75; a movie whose tender heft about the elderly in Japan jumping into an assisted suicide program to curb overpopulation floored me so much I couldn’t immediately articulate why. But it’s somber & aching, & life affirming.
Plan 30 for millennials who had to suffer through Plan 75 when.
Total waste of an incredibly interesting premise; character arcs and motivations barely made any sense individually nor collectively.
Instead of taking on the ethics of the fictional bill in question and using it to reflect on current systems, Plan 75 chose to take the sentimentality route (most Asian films do), which is perfectly okay if done convincingly, cohesively, and coherently -- it wasn't. (Inter)actions, connections, and dialogues, especially the Filipino ones, were confusing, forced, and inorganic.
Make your aging population see this and y'all won't need that stupid bill.
[QCinema International Film Festival 2022, Power Plant Mall]
< Ang Ranking: Best International Feature Film submissions to the 95th Academy Awards >
The opening scene of Plan 75 promotes a far different film from the one Chie Hayakawa delivers in the 100-or-so minutes that follow it. Jarring as this tonal shift may be, the somewhat disturbing delivery of this introduction is made particularly noteworthy by the fact that it's the only part of the film based directly upon real events. In 2016, when a care worker murdered 19 people and injured 26 others in the name of "easing the social burden" caused by caring for the disabled, the antipathy towards those in need of focused care became the genesis for a story in which the elderly are "permitted" to be euthanized once they reach the age of 75. With this invented proposition,…
Raindrops move like cells forming life. Men and women in solidarity despite generational differences. And there's the main concepts and what it means to be a Filipino laborer in another country behind all of this, where the execution of these topics makes you really yearn that there should have been something more complex to it. The understatedness and distance isn't even bad, it just needs the poignancy and punch.
🇯🇵Japanese entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards 🏆
This movie is such an eye-opener on the issue of Aging Population, not just in Japan but in the whole world.
Commendable performances from Chieko Baisho & Stefanie Arianne👌.
The story is so moving and I'm glad it had the satisfying ending it deserves.
Even at 80 years old Chieko Baisho is capable of breaking my heart. I don't know if everything here needs to be here, and it's not a movie you watch "for fun" but I highly recommend it.
The day before I watched Plan 75 I’d caught up with some old friends. One of their mums has dementia, and they were explaining to me how great a burden it was - not just for them and their extended family, but also on the region’s under-resourced nursing facilities. I remember their mum as a bright and friendly person, but they explained how she has now become paranoid and violent. They explained how the difficulty in caring for her condition threatens her daughter-in-law’s heart condition and distracts her grandchild’s study for his final exams.
One of my friends is a doctor, and he expressed his personal wish for a voluntary euthanasia system. He is sure that his mother-in-law would have…
Sad, quiet. The understated nature makes you feel the loneliness which is nice. Concept is good but the execution is lacking and what we do get is surface level commentary where all the stories feel underexlpored. Tries too hard at a social critique which isn't actually a failure and even effective on some level but just that it could have been handled with lot more care and in more detail, especially the Filipino immigrant worker arc which is basically there to function as a contrivance for a key moment. Still quite liked its gentle sense of melancholy, the way it flows and it does have some genuinely moving moments, not bad watch overall just a missed opportunity.
