George Clooney faces fury for ‘romanticizing death’ in his new film
By Chukwudi Onyewuchi | Published: 2025-10-28 17:30:00 | Source: The Blast
George ClooneyHis new movie “In Love” hasn’t started filming yet, but it’s already generating controversy.
The actor is set to star in a film about medically assisted suicide, a topic that critics say could send a dangerous message to millions of vulnerable people.
Dr. Ramona Coelho, a Canadian doctor who cared for her late father, who had dementia, claims the film glorifies death and could lead to “suicide contagion.”
She accuses Clooney of glamorizing tragedy and turning suffering into entertainment.
Article continues below ad
George Clooney’s film faces backlash for ‘romanticizing death’
George Clooney’s new film “In Love” is based on Amy Bloom’s memoir about her husband’s decision to end his life after being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
The 64-year-old plays the husband alongside Annette Bening as Bloom.
While some view the story as a poignant love story about dignity and choice, others see it as crossing a dangerous line.
Dr. Ramona Coelho said: Daily Mail that the film risks “romanticizing death” and making medically assisted suicide seem like an act of devotion.
She warned that such images could affect vulnerable people suffering from illness or fear of deterioration.
Clooney’s production company, Smokehouse Pictures, has not commented, but critics say that with star power, the film could normalize something that should never be in the spotlight.
Article continues below ad
For Ramona, the issue is not about art, but about responsibility. “Hollywood needs to understand the extent of its influence,” she told the outlet.
Article continues below ad
Clooney is accused of sending a dangerous message
Dr. Ramona’s concern runs deeper than moral outrage because she believes “In Love” could lead to what experts call “suicide contagion.”
“If George Clooney makes death look beautiful, sexy, and noble, what message does that send to the sick, the elderly, or the disabled?” I asked.
The doctor believes that media portrayal can have a real impact, especially when it comes to celebrities.
She compared the danger to the rise in suicides after the death of Robin Williams, warning that romantic storytelling could inspire imitation. Clooney is known for his choice of films that deal with moral complexity, but critics fear this film crosses the line between exploration and endorsement.
Supporters of the project claim it will be handled “sensitively, not sensationally,” but Ramona remains skeptical.
Article continues below ad
For her, turning medically assisted suicide into a love story is not only brave, but dangerous. “We should teach people how to live, not how to die,” she said.
Article continues below ad
George Clooney’s film strikes a chord with dementia families
Dr. Ramona’s anger comes from his personal experience. She cared for her father, Kevin Coelho, during his final years with dementia.
“He no longer knew who the grandchildren were, but he talked every day about how beautiful the trees in Canada were,” she revealed.
For her, those moments of joy proved that life with dementia still has meaning. “He died naturally, and we are all hugging him. It was beautiful.”
She believes the Hollywood version of dementia, filled with fear and despair, ignores the love, peace and connection that many families still experience.
“People say they would rather die than develop dementia,” she said. “That is the cruelest thing you can say to your daughter.”
Ramona worries that Clooney’s film might make others think that early death is the only dignified option.
“My father showed me that dignity is not about control, but about love,” she explained.
Article continues below ad
Clooney’s film raises controversy again about euthanasia
The controversy surrounding the film “In Love” has sparked controversy over assisted-dying laws in North America.
Canada legalized medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in 2016, but the law has since expanded to include people with chronic illnesses and disabilities.
Dr. Ramona, a member of Ontario’s MAiD Review Committee, says she has seen alarming cases where patients were approved for euthanasia after a simple evaluation.
“People are approved for assisted dying out of fear – fear of deterioration, fear of being a burden,” she explained, revealing that many dementia patients who choose MAiD never receive appropriate palliative care.
Critics say the system fails to protect vulnerable groups, while supporters insist there are safeguards.
However, Ramona argues that when the process of death becomes an “easy answer,” society loses empathy.
“If the needs of people with dementia are met, their quality of life can remain high,” she said. “Suffering comes when care is missing.”
Article continues below ad
George Clooney’s film is called a “snuff film for people with disabilities.”
Disability advocates have joined the backlash. Ian Mackintosh, executive director of Not Dead Yet, described George Clooney’s film as “a disability film by any other name”.
Hollywood has a habit of showing the lives of disabled people as tragic or disposable, he said.
“Films like Million Dollar Baby and Me Before You glorify suicide as noble if you’re disabled. In Love will be no different,” he claimed.
Coelho agrees, calling it “ageism and discrimination against people with disabilities disguised as compassion.”
She argues that portraying euthanasia as romantic can pressure vulnerable people to see death as a duty. “What seems like love can sometimes be coercion,” she said.
For her, the real story Hollywood should tell is about life, not death.
She said of her father: “He couldn’t remember names, but he remembered love. He noticed trees. He found joy. That’s what true dignity looks like.” “We should tell stories about how to live, not how to die.”
(tags for translation) George Clooney (R) new movie
ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
