Last Cab to Darwin not real voluntary euthanasia story

The Australian film Last Cab to Darwin is currently in theatres throughout the country.

It is loosely based on the story of Max Bell, a terminally ill taxi driver from the News South Wales town of Broken Hill who in 1996 drove himself over 3000 kilometres to Darwin to take advantage of a law that made euthanasia legal in the Northern Territory.

On the face of it, the film’s New Zealand release is timely.

With the death of Wellington lawyer Lecretia Seales in June and the debates around euthanasia that were initiated by her High Court case seeking the legal right to die, Last Cab to Darwin’s themes are of the moment.

Public support for Seales was widespread, standing in stark contrast to the attitudes of politicians, the medical establishment and our ever-lifeaffirming religious communities. The majority of New Zealanders are in favour of voluntary assisted suicide for the terminally ill, but we are let down by our institutions. It is a failure of democracy. As a heart-warming melodrama and reflection on race relations in the not always tolerant federation across the ditch, Last Cab to Darwin has merit.

However, nowhere in its credits is the name of Max Bell mentioned. The stage play taken from Bell’s narrative isn’t referenced, either, even though the film is clearly co-adapted from it by the playwright himself, Reg Cribb.

There are good reasons for this. In the play and the movie, Bell is given a different surname and a completely fictionalised backstory. His relationship with an Aboriginal neighbour assumes huge importance.

Cribb uses it as a commentary on the tense co-existence of white Australia with the nation’s first people, furthering the point by having Rex pick up a troubled Aboriginal man along the way.

The epic nature of Bell’s drive lends itself to a conventional road movie. Rex is both Thelma and Louise and the Aboriginal chap is like Brad Pitt’s character, even wearing the same cowboy hat.

Older dramatic archetypes are tapped into. Rex’s drive is a quest in the best traditions of Homer. A tree festooned with rotting feral cat carcasses assumes quasireligious significance.

A British barmaid found in an outback pub turns out to be a nurse – an angel in the desert, as it were. Despite Rex’s fatigue and primary goal, he finds time for all manner of adventures. There’s laughter, tears and romance.

The euthanasia theme is rather lost in all of this.

When movie Rex finally gets to Darwin, his trusty companions by his side, things are further fudged.

Veteran actor Jackie Weaver plays the rogue doctor who is promoting assisted suicide. Presented at first with a degree of sympathy, she becomes an increasingly ambiguous figure.

Rex’s desire to end his own life is undermined by his friends and a phone line reconciliation with his neighbour proves decisive.

Love can triumph over everything: alcoholism, racism, excruciating pain and even terminal illness.

By the conventions of commercial cinema, the ending is a smart one. Focus groups no doubt approved. There will be a lot of smiling faces leaving theatres.

Spare a thought, though, for the actual Max Bell.

The real narrative was not as pretty.

Bell reached Darwin on his own steam, picking up no one on his six-day drive.

Immediately admitted to hospital, the one place that he did not want to be, he languished there for three weeks while lily-livered doctors debated his fate.

Euthanasia was nominally legal in the state at the time, but it required the signatures of medical professionals cowed by their own union, the AMA. None would sign.

Bell felt betrayed and drove back to Broken Hill in disgust. He died slowly, in hospital, in precisely the protracted and painful manner he wanted to avoid. Any with the stomach to watch this can find the footage on YouTube.

In real life, despite the big lie sold by pop music, Hollywood and the greeting card industry, love does not transcend all.

More to the point, there are some circumstances where love dictates actions that would end life in the cause of ending suffering.

Recently a friend of mine died an unspeakably horrible death from motor neurone disease, a proud and powerful man trapped inside his own body.

Nursed by his own large family in his own home, he could not have been any more loved at the end, yet his last weeks were agonising.

His views on voluntary suicide were clear. The very least a civilised society could have done was to respect them.