An air of melancholy permeates throughout the Cannes-winning film, Plan 75, Japan’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 75th Academy Awards in the US.
A co-production between Japan and the Philippines, the 112-minute long film presents a radical, yet also humanitarian alternative to growing old, hopeless and desperate in the Land of the Rising Sun.
Conversely, becoming old in that very progressive country invites images of daily sunsets, uselessness, isolation and ultimately, depression.
For years now, Japan has been having problems with its population getting older, thus creating a demand for Asian caregivers. Filipinos have been quick to fill in the dark, empty spaces in the lives of Japan’s senior citizens, and one such point of view is humanely unveiled in this film.
Filipino-Japanese actress Stefanie Arianne plays Maria, a caregiver culture-shocked by government policy of encouraging old people to die in peace. Volunteering seniors are brought to a facility in the countryside, where they are prepped to die through mercy killing or euthanasia. It doesn’t matter whether they are seriously ill or are still healthy enough to work and fend for themselves.
For a moment there, while anticipating the film’s slow-burning climax, we had entertained thoughts that Plan 75 as a reworking or a re-imagination of the 1973 equally dystopian film, Soylent Green.
Curiously, that futuristic film, about the connection between overpopulation and hunger, is set in the present tense, year 2022.
Led by a cast topped by Charlton Heston, the science-fiction movie introduced so-called Soylent Green crackers to feed a hungry New York population suffering from poverty, unemployment and related social ills.
Towards the end of this nightmarish fantasy, we learn that those mysterious, feed-all crackers had been made from euthanized human corpses, notably from the elderly.
Happily, Plan 75 isn’t about partaking of processed human flesh, although it speaks of something just as disturbing: the eroding value of compassion in the age of extreme high technology. Through the character of Maria, the world gets to witness the Filipino heart, in the right place, in the right time.
We thank filmmaker Chie Hayakawa, who has beautifully paid tribute to this age-old Filipino value of love, respect and care to the elderly through Maria’s delineation of a compassionate caregiver, the mark of a good Filipino. One scene that’s full of subtext, stands out for me, the one wherein the lead actress, Cheiko Baisho, an elderly, thanks her young phone pal, for spending 15 minutes of her time daily to chat with her, stressing the value of conversation in a lonely person’s life.
Plan 75 is co-produced by Filipino production houses FUSEE and Daluyong Studios. You can still catch it in select theatrical showings, exclusively distributed by TBA Studios.