Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: Facing Death (review)

How does the most famous spokesperson for the needs of the dying confront the end of her own life? This is the subject of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: Facing Death. Consisting primarily of interviews with Kübler-Ross, her sisters, and her colleagues, interspersed with archival material from her life and career, Facing Death is a nuanced portrait of the author of the 1969 best-seller On Death and Dying.

At the time of the film's production, Kübler-Ross, who died on 24 August 2004, was living in seclusion on her Scottsdale, Arizona, ranch, having suffered a number of strokes that left her paralyzed on one side. As the film traces her life and career, it continually circles back to her sickbed. The conversations with the dying woman form the dramatic center of the film. Just as Kübler-Ross did, director Stefan Haupt seeks to understand how the dying experience death, asking her to talk about her feelings as the end of her life approaches, and by extension, asking viewers to contemplate their own mortality. The anticipation of her death creates a feeling of suspense and pathos, accentuated by a brooding musical score and scenes of the desert skyline at sunset. When she looks back on her life and says "it was a good life, fantastic," we sense her frustration at being incapacitated, and feel sadness at her approaching end.

The beginning sequence, a car driving on the highway near the ranch, structures the film as a journey and foreshadows the biographical questions that drive the film: How did Kübler-Ross become interested in the needs of the dying? What led up to her critique of the care of the terminally ill in On Death and Dying? Born a triplet in Zurich in 1926, and given little chance of survival, Elisabeth Kübler early on developed a sympathy for the sick and handicapped. Amid the devastation of World War II, she traveled throughout Europe, helping to rebuild villages. A visit to the concentration camp at Majdanek solidified her desire to relieve human suffering, and cemented her decision to become a doctor. In medical school she met her future husband, Emanuel Ross, with whom she moved to the United States in 1958. At the University of Chicago's Billings Hospital, Kübler-Ross instituted the seminars with dying patients that made her famous. From observations of the terminally ill, she concluded that medical students and physicians had much to learn from the dying about how to improve end-of-life care.

On Death and Dying emerged out of Kübler-Ross's conversations with terminally ill patients. It described the now-famous five stages of the dying process: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. According to Kübler-Ross, doctors and family members needed to assist dying patients through the stages (though she acknowledged that not all patients experienced all stages) so that they could die in peace. Above all, Kübler-Ross urged physicians to talk openly and honestly with their patients about their prognoses. And to do that, physicians needed to confront their own fears of death.

The book became an international best-seller. But many of her colleagues argued that her work exploited patients and lacked rigor. When the University of Chicago terminated her contract, she moved away from hospitals as the setting for her work with the dying and created Life, Death, and Transition workshops. These focused on the needs of family members and caregivers, as well as of the dying, and encouraged participants to work through "unfinished business" in their personal relationships. No longer connected to an academic medical environment, Kübler-Ross became increasingly involved with spiritualism and research into near-death experiences, which in turn led to a new barrage of criticism. Many disapproved of her increasing belief in life after death and her statements such as "Death does...