Michael Haneke’s (Funny Games, Time of the Wolf) Amour might not be the most depressing movie of the year, but it is the most horrifying. The plot line could be “growing old with the one you love the most while facing life’s misery.” Instead, this movie is simply about the deterioration of a wife and what an elderly husband is able and willing to do to take care of her when she can no longer care for herself. A universal belief is that we all want to age gracefully and not impose on others. A universal truth, I know, is that this does not often happen. The idea that a husband and wife can fall in love in their 20s, live 60 years with minimal health issues, and then die in their sleep on the same night isn’t realistic, no matter how much we want it to be. In all likelihood, each spouse will rely on the help of their partner. In the end, one partner will most likely care for and make the decisions of the other. That’s what this movie shows us. And it shows us to it in an oh-so-brutal way.
Jean-Louis Trintignant (Z, Fiesta) and Emmanuelle Riva (Therese, Venus Beauty Institute) star as Georges and Anne, a seemingly private couple well into their 80s, who are still very much in love with each other. Both are retired music teachers. They have one daughter, Eva (Isabelle Huppert), who lives abroad with a husband (whom Georges and Anne don’t care for) and two grown children. However, while Georges and Anne are close to one another, they don’t seem incredibly close to Eva.
Their relationship is severely tested when Anne suffers a stroke that paralyzes the right side of her body. Georges suddenly has the burden of helping her physically get from point A to point B while also dealing with Anne’s deteriorating physical, mental, and emotional states. Compound that with the fact that Georges isn’t exactly the model of fitness himself. It’s not that he’s fat or out of shape. Instead, he’s just old and weak. He struggles to move around their one-floor flat on his own. Picking Anne up from the bed and putting her in her wheelchair exhausts him. Georges does hire a nurse to help care for Anne, but that only accounts for about 12 hours each week. While there doesn’t seem to be much of a financial burden restricting Georges and Anne, she makes him promise that he won’t put her in a home or make her return to the hospital.
It is unclear how many months have passed from the start of this movie until the end. During this time, however, we watch Anne get progressively work and Georges struggle with how he should care for her. When Eva tries to take to Georges about her mother, he is often vague. It is almost as if Haneke follows the universal mindset that parents don’t want to become a burden on their children. It might especially be the case in this film because of how distant their daughter is from Anne and Georges. Georges tries to do it all on his own. Finally, the physical and mental stress of it all becomes too much.
The acting in this movie is fantastic. You probably have not heard of Riva or Trintignant before this film because, while they’ve each been in the industry for a long time, they’ve each done mostly French films that probably aren’t viewed by mainstream Americans. Riva was very deserving of her Best Actress Academy Award nomination. Her performance was good enough to win. I thought she performed better than Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook. I still thought Noami Watts gave the best performance of the year in The Impossible. Trintignant could have garnered a Best Actor award as well, but I still thought the five best performances were Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln), Hugh Jackman (Les Miserables), Denzel Washington (Flight), John Hawkes (The Sessions) and Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook). Regarding the film’s direction, it was superb for the first half and terrible for the second half. I appreciated Haneke’s desire not to force the audience into a certain emotion. While the demise of Anne was cruel and, often, unbearable to watch, Haneke let us find those emotions on the screen rather than having the characters break out in tears to lead us to do the same. Yet he left many dots unconnected. It’s not like this was a complex movie, but I often felt I was missing something because Haneke was trying to be too artistic. The uncertain time frame between certain scenes in this movie hindered its progress. The ending was too vague, and we deserved a more concrete conclusion or an ending we could muster in her head that we could find believable. I understand he wanted to make a movie more than “Woman gets sick. Man tries to care for her”. He succeeded in doing that. In doing so, he gained film lovers but lost movie lovers (if that makes sense). I distinguish the two because a film lover sees a movie more as an art form, whereas a movie lover sees a movie more as entertainment. I fall right in the middle and as I get older move towards the end of being a film lover. So while this movie resonates with critics, it doesn’t do so with the once-a-month moviegoer. Again, I don’t think Haneke was trying to connect with the once-a-month moviegoer, but this is something to consider when deciding whether or not to watch this film.
I will say one more thing about it. If you are over 30, you can identify with this movie somehow. Some of us will have gone through this very situation with our partner. Some of us will have gone through the same situation with one of our parents. And some of us will have seen this (granted, maybe from afar) with one of our grandparents. But it is a film older audiences will be able to identify with.
Plot 8.5/10
Character Development 9.5/10
Character Chemistry 9/10
Acting 10/10 (Riva and Trintignant give career-defining performances)
Screenplay 8/10
Directing 8/10 (Haneke left a little too much up for interpretation at the end…I want to give him a lower review here, but the direction in the first half of the movie was rather masterful)
Cinematography 6.5/10 (the movie takes place almost entirely in the couple’s flat…the camera angles were terrible…the views of the room were difficult to see…it felt like this movie was filmed in the first real apartment that Haneke found rather than building a set that would make filming a more manageable task)
Sound 9/10 (love the piano)
Hook and Reel 9/10 (the hype hooked me…you’ve got to go into this movie ready to work. It’s a very good movie, but it isn’t particularly enjoyable…if you go in with the wrong frame of mind, you might end up hating it)
Universal Relevance 10/10 (unfortunately, this is all too real)
87.5%
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