Plan 75

Director: Chie Hayakawa (Japan, France, Philippines). Year of Release: 2022

A darkened building. We can vaguely pick out the outline of a man carrying a shotgun. As our eyes become accustomed to the light, we see overturned wheelchairs and walking frames lying on the ground. A news broadcast announces the introduction of Plan 75. Given Japan’s “ageing population”, citizens aged 75 or more are invited to make their contribution to society by dying. They will be paid ¥100,000 (just over €600) for their troubles.

A shiny office has been set up to implement the plan, full of keen young workers in sharp suits. On the wall, there is a logo, whose letters are in the shape of a smiley face. We follow one of the youngsters, Hiromu, who is excited at being asked to implement such a social policy. Hiromu’s job is to liaise with elderly clients, show them glossy brochures, and sweet talk them into their death. He also helps try out anti-homeless benches in the park.

Michiko is one of Hiromu’s clients. Aged 78, Michiko comes with a group of friends who are interested in the offer of spending their final days in a luxury hotel. Many of the friends seem to have given up on life, but Michiko is still active. She was working as a maid, until the company she worked for sacked her. After one of Michiko’s colleagues had a workplace accident, the company ruled that seeing old people puts off their customers, and sacked her.

Michiko gets a temporary job directing traffic, but that’s no job for a woman her age. She then learns that her house is to be demolished. The only affordable alternative housing available is for people claiming benefits, and she’s too proud to do that. Michiko’s friends are interested in Plan 75 because of the fancy hotel and their apparent contribution to society. She is there because she sees few alternatives.

Yoko works as a call centre assistant, trying to win new clients for the Plan, and to stop existing clients changing their mind. Although officially, anyone who signs up to Plan 75 can withdraw at any time, the system is rigged to prevent this. Yoko is encouraged by her bosses not to show any empathy with her clients. So it is fully against the rules when she starts to talk to Michiko and a personal level and even takes her bowling.

Maria is a Filipina maid who attends a happy-clappy church. Her five year old daughter needs a heart operation, and Maria is struggling to find the necessary money on her meagre wages as a healthcare assistant. Someone at the church tells her about a well-paid government job in her line of work. It is for Plan 75, undressing corpses and preparing them for cremation. Unlike her work colleagues, Maria refrains from stealing from the dead.

Hiromu’s satisfaction with his work is challenged by a visit from his estranged uncle Yukio. It is Yukio’s 75^th birthday, and after a life of manual work and the death of his wife, he’s had enough. Suddenly the human implications of Hiromu’s “socially helpful” job hit him, and he tries to persuade his uncle to carry on living. But Yukio continues with the programme, and as he lies in a hospital bed waiting to die, he sees Michiko in the next bed.

What could have been a very heavy-handed satire is actually very nuanced. Without haranguing us, the film shows the cynical complicity of government and big business. While politicians blandly thank Plan participants for helping the next generation, Hiromu learns that, instead of the promised dignified funerals, patients’ ashes are being sold as landfill to a recycling company. We hear a news reader announcing a forthcoming Plan 65.

Plan 75 is a thought experiment which is based on the very real experience of a neoliberal system which cares more for profit than for human life. In the film, applying for social services is time consuming and difficult. Plan 75’s phone lines are open 24/7. There is little investment in the social care which would make Michiko’s and Yukio’s final days worth living. Instead money is poured into logos and glossy brochures encouraging them to die.

A couple of self-righteous critics have dismissed the film saying “of course it couldn’t happen”. I’ve a number of things to say to these critics. First, you might have a problem with quite a few films, say Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Secondly, the point of a dystopian vision is not to say where we are now but to suggest where we might end up with the current people in power. Thirdly, there are populist politicians in office now who would do this if they could.

Other critics claim that the film argues the case against euthanasia. It does not. Director Chie Hayakawa said in an interview: “It’s not a film about pro or con euthanasia… I have some understanding and empathy toward people who seek the right to death-in-dignity, but I have doubt about legislating it because there may be certain people who are not allowed to have an alternative choice to death due to social or psychological pressure.”

She went on: “Our capitalist society, which values rationality and productivity, creates the distinction between “worthy lives” and “worthless lives”, and critical views on socially weak people get stronger by the day. My anger and anxiety toward such intolerance of society motivated me to make this film.” The discussion about euthanasia is really a side issue in a much more urgent debate about a society which refuses to allow human dignity.

We see how commercialism – capitalism if you will – distorts what should be a personal choice. It is not that individuals should not be allowed the right to die when they want, rather that governments and big business who would profit from their death should not be provided with the agency to kill them. Plan 75 is a slow burner, which has an apparently languid pace, but impresses you with its profundity and subtlety the more you think about it.