A Group That Just Wants You To Let Their People Go

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

It’s tough to imagine a less-enticing topic than assisted suicide. Death, as a concept, has a metaphysical power. Yet there is nothing sexy about the miserable fact of dying, or documentaries about the process. “Exit: The Right To Die,” which opens today at Film Forum, is merciful: Filmmaker Fernand Melgar doesn’t drag out his clear-eyed study, which details Switzerland’s innovative approach to helping its citizens die in a manner of their own choosing.

Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, unlike in America, where efforts at what its practitioners call “self-deliverance” sometimes turn into a legal circus — here’s to you, Dr. Kevorkian — or more simply lead to grisly family drama. Suicide, even when chosen as an option by the terminally ill, is never painless, but here it certainly appears humane. For two decades, an organization called EXIT has helped its members escape the mortal coil, through an elaborate system that emphasizes the client’s understanding of their own situation rather than an immediate out.

As often as not, the prospective suicide dies in the period of time leading up to the planned event, as if simply having control over his own departure makes it easier to let go. EXIT has been wildly successful. It has more than 10,000 members, ranging in age from 21 to 103, and a long waiting list of applicants.

The film is not without humor. During a meeting with other escorts — what EXIT’s counselors call themselves — one remarks how overburdened she has been by the demands on the organization’s resources. A date has been set to feed a client a lethal cocktail, but the escort can’t make it and has to reschedule, suggesting they put it off for a week. This puts a new twist on Emily Dickinson’s observation: “Because I could not stop for Death/He kindly stopped for me.”More poignantly, an escort sits with an elderly woman who seems simply exhausted with what life still has to offer her. They pick a date — the 22nd — and joke about whether the client, who enjoyed gambling in her day, felt it was a winning number. Maybe not lucky, she says, but “22 is a good number … And it will be mine.”

While it dutifully outlines the administrative nature of making assisted suicide a viable program, listening in on hotline calls and dropping in on staff meetings,”Exit” punches home when it focuses on individual cases. Even if you have not known a friend or relative who has been wheelchair-bound before their time, the case of a 45-year-old woman severely crippled by multiple sclerosis is heartbreaking and hard to watch as she painstakingly scrawls a barely legible letter attesting to her soundness of mind and desire to end her life.

It is not, after all, that anyone wants to die for the sake of death, but rather that living in such diminished circumstances has become too difficult to bear. Or, as one EXIT member puts it, amid much ironic laughter: “Waiting to die kills us.”


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use