The Suicide Tourist

John Zaritsky's documentary, originally produced for Canadian television and later broadcast on the PBS series Frontline, focuses on the final days of Craig Ewert, a Chicago college professor whose health rapidly deteriorated with the onset of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Taking advantage of Swiss laws that allow assisted suicide and working with the nonprofit group Dignitas, Ewert and his wife Mary traveled to Zurich in 2006 (just five months after his diagnosis), after which Ewert ended his life by ingesting a lethal sedative. Zaritsky specifically avoids the larger debate on moral and legal dimensions—U.S. policy is barely mentioned, while everyone in the film insists that Ewert made his decision on his own (Ewert himself makes clear that he could not anticipate a future where he would be reduced to a state of near-total paralysis). While some might question the appropriateness of Ewert's death being filmed for public presentation (he drifts into a permanent sleep on a bed in a rented Zurich apartment, with Mary and two Dignitas representatives present), The Suicide Tourist nonetheless offers a clear and unapologetic argument for the right of people of sound mind but severely damaged bodies to make the ultimate decision to terminate their lives. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)