Euthanasia on the Silver Screen

[Michie]

India’s Bollywood softens up mercy killing — with song and dance.

Euthanasia campaigner Dr. Philip Nitschke's 'suicide kit' is seen during a 2009 Reuters interview. Bollywood, as the prolific Indian movie industry is known, has produced a big-budget romance with the not-so-typical theme of euthanasia.

MUMBAI, India — The topic of assisted suicide is an old one for Hollywood, with Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby being one of the latest examples.

But not for Bollywood — as the prolific Indian movie industry is dubbed.

That has changed with the release of Guzaarish, a big-budget romance that combines the song-and-dance elements typical of Bollywood with the not-so-typical theme of “mercy killing.”

The film sparked controversy even before its release last month, as novelist Dayanand Raajan claimed the plot was lifted from his unpublished novel.

As well, Delhi lawyer Aditya Dewan sought a court order forcing producer Ronnie Screwvalla to add a disclaimer to the film acknowledging that euthanasia is against the law in India.

Guzaarish has not done well at the box office. Costing $17 million, it grossed only $4.5 million in its initial weeks in Indian theaters, perhaps because it opened opposite Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Despite extensive dialogue in English, it has not done well in foreign markets either.

Pascoal Carvalho, a corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy for Life in Rome and a member of the Mumbai Diocesan Human Life Committee, said he could only hope the movie “would lead to an increasing consciousness of civil rights of our challenged persons.”

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