PBS film forces viewers to confront mortality

NEW YORK >> On its face, PBS has a huge challenge in promoting filmmaker Helen Whitney’s upcoming documentary on facing mortality. Most people want to avoid the subject of death, not see a two-hour film about it.

Watching “Into the Night: Portraits of Life and Death” makes clear that it’s a lot more about life.

The film, which premieres at 9 p.m. Monday, features interviews with several thoughtful people for whom death is more than an abstraction. They include an historian whose attitude is changed by a youthful near-death experience, a man with terminal cancer who builds his own coffin, a former Islamic radical who questioned his beliefs about immortality while in solitary confinement, a pastor who struggles to regain faith after the deaths of two sons.

“What is it that you most fear?” Whitney said. “I don’t think that people have these conversations. I don’t think they do until the last minutes. It’s not just about being brave at the end. It’s about how you live your life now.”

Whitney’s parents died within three months of each other when she was 12, and she said that influenced many of the choices she made in a film career that has stretched beyond 40 years. She’s taken a special interest in spiritual matters, with projects on how the 2001 terrorist attacks affected people’s religious beliefs, the concept of forgiveness, Mormons and Pope John Paul II.

With “Into the Night,” she wanted to have those conversations. After all, her film says, “there is nothing that we will ever do that feels so alone as dying.” The film is framed by actor Gabriel Byrne reciting Dylan Thomas’ famous poem, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” to show that when the time comes, some do and some don’t.

Caitlin Doughty’s life changed in fourth grade, when she witnessed a young girl fall off an escalator to her death at a shopping center. It stuck with her, and she eventually became a mortician and a leader in the death salon movement, where people gather to talk about mortality. “Death happens and it can be messy and it can be gross, but it can also be beautiful,” she says.

Phyllis Tickle, the historian who was terminally ill when she talked with Whitney, nearly died in childbirth as a young woman. She had the sensation of moving toward a light and a voice asking if she were ready and she said, no, that she wanted to raise a family with her new husband. She survived. Tickle said she’s aware some people doubt such near-death experiences, considering them some neurological trickery. The film takes no side in the debate.

What the experience did was leave her utterly unafraid of death, which she jokingly hoped would come while sitting on her deck with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in front of her.

“Once the fear of death goes,” she says, “you can’t be afraid of life. You’re a different person.”

Tickle died a few months after speaking to Whitney, as did Jeffrey Piehler, a surgeon with prostate cancer. Together with a friend who was a carpenter, he built his own coffin, a task his family found morbid. Piehler found impending death liberating, enabling him to see “life in Technicolor,” let loose of destructive emotions and enjoy his family.

At 80 years old, Whitney’s film editor, Ted Winterburn, was dying himself of prostate cancer. He approached her and said it was time to talk about it, if only because she would soon need to find a new editor. That led to some of the best discussions they ever had as friends, and an interview she conducted with him ends “Into the Night.”

To potential viewers, Whitney has a simple message: Don’t be scared.

“I think it will give people an urgency to their lives not to push off the meaningful conversations, to forgive another person or make amends, to not put off something you have a passion to do,” she said. “Think, ‘what is my story, what is the importance of my life.’ Drill down on that, so that when the moment does come, you’re not filled with regrets.’”