I’m sure there has been a great deal written about the wonderful French movie Amour, (2012), the story of an old man taking care of his wife whose function deteriorates after a series of strokes. The film impressed critics and audiences alike (Rotten Tomatoes: critics 92; audience 83) and won the 2013 Academy Award for best foreign language film. Having not read any commentary, I feel free to respond without being inhibited by those with more authorial cachet. This is something like succeeding in avoiding any news about a Packer game that has already been played so that I can enjoy watching it play out through my DVR as if it were all happening in my own real time. So herewith, my response to the film recently seen on the small screen at home:
First: No American would make a movie like this. It is too focused on the ordinary, on conversation. It is the anti-Silver Linings Playbook (which I enjoyed in a wholly different way), another movie about a problem-ridden family, with a literally manic protagonist driving a manically melodramatic story to an improbable and sensational conclusion. Amour slows down to look carefully at the commerce of everyday experience and lets the drama reside there. It reveals that experience in a leisurely yet serious way, with scenes of people just talking and brief close-ups of parts of paintings in the couple’s apartment that convey visually a deeper look into the scenery of the heart, the picture within the picture that emerges through the patience of focusing in on detail. In fact these close-ups for me are one of the most memorable parts of the movie.
Second: In its realistic treatment of a commonplace part of life it is almost as much documentary as fiction. Everyone who lives long enough faces the deterioration of a loved one. There is nothing original about the story. It is the way the elements of a commonplace story are just enough condensed, magnified, carefully chosen and beautifully arranged to make art out of the mundane
Third: I’m glad I didn’t know the plot in advance because I was shocked when George smothered his wife with a pillow. This is the moment when the slow-paced, almost tedious rendering of the story concentrates itself, the reverse big bang when the universe of misfortune slams back together again. Yes, the groundwork had been laid. Early on Anne cuts off George’s avenue of respite by making him promise never to bring her back to the hospital. He does not protest openly, but his agreement is tacit, probably grudging. Later she tries to force him to admit that his nonstop care for her is taking an unbearable toll on him. He does not admit it, but neither does he wholeheartedly disclaim it. His defense is to say that if he were the failing one, she would do the same for him. In both exchanges he denies she is forcing him, a mere mortal, to engage in a Herculean task As her quality of life deteriorates she makes clear, first with words and later when she can no longer speak, with the agony of her facial expressions and her apathetic and angry responses to her forced and futile rehabilitation exercises, that she no longer wants to go on. George is increasingly forced to realize that he is keeping her alive for himself. In the climactic scene, she refuses to be fed. He forces water into her mouth and she spits it out in a desperate, rebelliously enraged attempt to take back control. He slaps her in response. Shocked by his violence, he apologizes pathetically. When moments later he smothers her with the pillow, is it an act of empathic mercy or of reactive rage of his own, an act of love or an act of hate? Is he snuffing her out to end his agony or hers? Is his agony that he cannot stand to see her suffer anymore or that he cannot stand how cruel he has become in efforts to preserve her for his own benefit? He seems never to permit himself to know how tortured he is by his ambivalent desire to fulfill her wishes, which are at times in concert with his, at times not. The groundwork has been logically and artfully laid, yet still I find it hard to believe him capable of what seems to be nevertheless an impulsive act of murdering his beloved.
Fourth: The above description demonstrates how the film peers unflinchingly into the deep psychology of self and relationship. It looks into the eye of the hurricane wherein reside the deep, soul testing experiences when love is tested to the fullest. By isolating George and Ann, the story permits us almost no distraction from the essential desperation of their plight. George’s daughter has a role to play, but it is quite peripheral. She is floundering in the winds outside the eye. George attempts to draw her in are fruitless because she is not ready to accept the grim reality there, where George resides in profound resignation to a condition of irreversible, horrific decline. Ironically, when she is finally ready, he literally locks the doors on her, attempting to keep her out of her mother’s room in a fruitless effort of the opposite kind, trying to deny himself the grim reality by preventing its confirmation by someone important outside of the him and his wife.
Fifth: We are left with gracefully frustrating, thought-provoking ambiguities. After the climactic scene we see George catch a second pigeon in his blanket, hold it, and stroke it through the blanket. I found myself horrified by the possibility that he was going to suffocate it, too, proving that he had become a murderer. Instead he cradles it and strokes it like a baby. Then we see him writing several pages before he leaves his home, but are told nothing of the content except his recounting of catching the pigeon. We are left to assume that he released this second pigeon, too, as he had to let go of Anne. What else did he say in his note? What was he thinking, after the fact? Where did he go?
Does any of that really matter? In the long run, everyone leaves us or we leave them. Ann has been leaving George bit by bit in an utterly agonizing way until he takes the matter into his own hands and regains control by leaving her. Nonetheless she is gone forever. Do we exist in order to love? Amour may be the experience and expression of what is best in us, what gives us a deep and beautiful purpose, but even if it lasts a lifetime it is not forever. And as the broken relationship between their daughter and her husband illustrates, our efforts to pass the torch are fraught with imperfection. Yet Amour leaves me with the profound impression that despite the inherent and indelible elements of finitude, fault, and finally tragedy in our efforts to love and to find meaning in loving, they are well worthwhile.
Third: I’m glad I didn’t know the plot in advance because I was shocked when George smothered his wife with a pillow. This is the moment when the slow-paced, almost tedious rendering of the story concentrates itself, the reverse big bang when the universe of misfortune slams back together again. Yes, the groundwork had been laid. Early on Anne cuts off George’s avenue of respite by making him promise never to bring her back to the hospital. He does not protest openly, but his agreement is tacit, probably grudging. Later she tries to force him to admit that his nonstop care for her is taking an unbearable toll on him. He does not admit it, but neither does he wholeheartedly disclaim it. His defense is to say that if he were the failing one, she would do the same for him. In both exchanges he denies she is forcing him, a mere mortal, to engage in a Herculean task As her quality of life deteriorates she makes clear, first with words and later when she can no longer speak, with the agony of her facial expressions and her apathetic and angry responses to her forced and futile rehabilitation exercises, that she no longer wants to go on. George is increasingly forced to realize that he is keeping her alive for himself. In the climactic scene, she refuses to be fed. He forces water into her mouth and she spits it out in a desperate, rebelliously enraged attempt to take back control. He slaps her in response. Shocked by his violence, he apologizes pathetically. When moments later he smothers her with the pillow, is it an act of empathic mercy or of reactive rage of his own, an act of love or an act of hate? Is he snuffing her out to end his agony or hers? Is his agony that he cannot stand to see her suffer anymore or that he cannot stand how cruel he has become in efforts to preserve her for his own benefit? He seems never to permit himself to know how tortured he is by his ambivalent desire to fulfill her wishes, which are at times in concert with his, at times not. The groundwork has been logically and artfully laid, yet still I find it hard to believe him capable of what seems to be nevertheless an impulsive act of murdering his beloved.
Fourth: The above description demonstrates how the film peers unflinchingly into the deep psychology of self and relationship. It looks into the eye of the hurricane wherein reside the deep, soul testing experiences when love is tested to the fullest. By isolating George and Ann, the story permits us almost no distraction from the essential desperation of their plight. George’s daughter has a role to play, but it is quite peripheral. She is floundering in the winds outside the eye. George attempts to draw her in are fruitless because she is not ready to accept the grim reality there, where George resides in profound resignation to a condition of irreversible, horrific decline. Ironically, when she is finally ready, he literally locks the doors on her, attempting to keep her out of her mother’s room in a fruitless effort of the opposite kind, trying to deny himself the grim reality by preventing its confirmation by someone important outside of the him and his wife.
Fifth: We are left with gracefully frustrating, thought-provoking ambiguities. After the climactic scene we see George catch a second pigeon in his blanket, hold it, and stroke it through the blanket. I found myself horrified by the possibility that he was going to suffocate it, too, proving that he had become a murderer. Instead he cradles it and strokes it like a baby. Then we see him writing several pages before he leaves his home, but are told nothing of the content except his recounting of catching the pigeon. We are left to assume that he released this second pigeon, too, as he had to let go of Anne. What else did he say in his note? What was he thinking, after the fact? Where did he go?
Does any of that really matter? In the long run, everyone leaves us or we leave them. Ann has been leaving George bit by bit in an utterly agonizing way until he takes the matter into his own hands and regains control by leaving her. Nonetheless she is gone forever. Do we exist in order to love? Amour may be the experience and expression of what is best in us, what gives us a deep and beautiful purpose, but even if it lasts a lifetime it is not forever. And as the broken relationship between their daughter and her husband illustrates, our efforts to pass the torch are fraught with imperfection. Yet Amour leaves me with the profound impression that despite the inherent and indelible elements of finitude, fault, and finally tragedy in our efforts to love and to find meaning in loving, they are well worthwhile.
