Amour * * * *
Early on in Michael Haneke’s latest film, after discovering that his wife Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) is in the beginnings of immanent medical decline, Georges (Jean Louis Trintignant) says, “We’ve always coped” because for him anything else isn’t an option. Amour (love in French) is the film’s title, but also its explanation –the lens through which every scene it contains must be viewed. As Georges and Anne unwittingly stand at the precipice of the future that her health will bring, she says to him, “I don’t understand” to which he replies, “Neither do I.” But they know they will face it together, as they always have. Age, death, and hardship find us all, but O the joy of having someone there with you when they come. And in spite of its heavy-handed material, what a joyous film Amour is.
Earlier this year in his film Elena, Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev established a baseline of routine. Without cementing a natural order, a change to it wouldn’t have been impactful. Using even less screen-time than Zvyagintsev, Haneke too solidifies a baseline for Amour: In just a few scenes, Georges and Anne’s decades of marriage are clearly defined through their chemistry. These moments exemplifying the love between Georges and Anne start the audience’s love affair with each of them. We love Anne just as Georges does so that when her body suddenly freezes and her face goes blank over breakfast, both Georges’ and our fears are palpable. Haneke’s complete lack of soundtrack in his film coupled with its spacial confinement to the couple’s apartment aide in establishing a true sense of home. These same auditory and visual techniques are what Haneke eventually utilizes to create cinematic claustrophobia and deafening silences.
By recalling archetypal
genre staples of classic horror, Haneke vilifies Anne’s sickness. He
personifies it as an intruder. The broken lock Georges and Anne come home to
find brings to mind the same invasive foreshadowing Friedkin used in The Exorcist. Rather than a demonic possession though, a sickness has entered this
couple’s life and possessed Anne. With Anne’s face blank and body unmoving,
Georges leaves the faucet on while he dresses in the other room to go out for
help. The sound of running water comes to an abrupt end though, and Georges’
face demonstrates how unnerved he is as he goes out to discover whether his
wife or whatever has taken her over has turned it off. When a bird flies into
the apartment (another intruder) through their stained glass window (a symbol
of the sanctuary that the apartment has become for Georges and Anne), Georges
works tirelessly to remove it. Georges even has a nightmare of a break-in and
the horrors waiting just outside the door to attack him and Anne.
Anne is not vilified though. Not to the audience or to
Georges. She is seen as a prisoner in her own flesh. “Old”, “sick”, or “dying”
are words that may describe the condition of Anne’s body, but never Anne
herself who is seen as lucid, vibrant, but trapped inside herself. Even after
multiple strokes and the vast worsening of her own state, Anne always seems
present –a testament to the inscrutable tour de force that Emmanuelle Riva
delivers with her performance. Georges’ love for her in the present, not just
the memory of who she once was physically, never wavers. There is a beautiful
romance to a scene where Georges asks her to “wrap your arms around me” and the
tender sort of dance that follows as he moves her from her wheelchair to a
sitting chair. George even fantasizes about her (as she is) playing the piano.
But just as when he heard the trickle of the sink come to an abrasive stop, so
does her playing in Georges’ daydream.
As Anne becomes increasingly immobile and eventually
bed-bound, Georges reluctantly brings nurses in. One in particular is the
embodiment of the insensitivity of the business of death. She cynically
expresses that this happens to everyone. Another nurse removes and replaces
Anne’s diaper and blandly narrates what she is doing to Georges and Anne. As
the camera observes Anne’s eyes as she is treated as an immobile object, one
wonders on Anne’s thoughts. Perhaps the fantasy in which she sits at and plays
her piano is not Georges’ but rather hers –to escape these moments of humiliating
inhumanity. Perhaps it belongs to them both… it is their communal fantasy.
Before her condition deteriorates, Georges helps Anne
through physical therapy, helps to feed her, helps bathe her. He and the film
treat her with the utmost dignity –a dignity she deserves. When an old piano
student of Anne’s comes to visit he calls the moment sad. But naming it as such
shows pity, and Georges and Anne don’t want pity. Even after one of Anne’s
strokes, the words that escape her ("...It's hard to say...") contain lucidity. Haneke
never sentimentalizes her illness, never exploits her character to milk
audience tears. But then a shot reveals her bare upper thigh as Georges helps
her stretch. In another scene she wets the bed, soaking the sheets. Haneke
makes much of her shame. Later on she is shown entirely nude and exposed as she
is washed in the shower.
I felt betrayed. The dignity that this character, this
woman, that Emmanuelle Riva deserved was stripped away. Haneke had exploited her to
manipulate his audience’s sympathies. But then I realized that these scenes
were wholly indicative of truth. Yes, Anne deserves more than the belittlement
her ailments bring her, but so does humanity. Such is the indignity of death.
It isn’t Haneke’s to dignify. It’s not
exploitative. The film looks at her condition as it would truly be. I came to
appreciate Riva’s bravery in taking on a role in which she is demeaned by
death. The mandatory dehumanization that death eventually forces upon us all,
she voluntarily underwent for the sake of showing what love (amour) is in this
story.
At the very beginning of the film, Georges and Anne go to a
theater to watch a concert by one of her former students. Haneke’s camera
observes them for an extended period (as Glazer’s did Nicole Kidman’s face in
Birth), beholding each and every nuance of both of their reactions even before
the concert begins. They don’t know about the invader of illness soon to enter
their lives –a sickness that won’t just belong to her but will be shared as
theirs, forever changing them both. Just as George and Anne don’t know what’s
to come, neither does the audience. And just as the film’s start focuses on an
audience reaction, so its end produces one. Without Georges by her side, Anne’s
story would have been a tragedy -a horror tale, as Georges’ would have been without
Anne to care for, and pour his love into. But theirs is a love story, and
thusly we react. We react to its beauty, to our mortality, and recognize that
our shallow assignations of importance are relative. For it is no thing keeping
us from facing either life or death alone, only Amour.
P.S. Stay tuned for the first of my Golden Globes Posts! And don't forget to vote in Rodney&Roger's weekly polls *located in the upper right-hand corner of your screen*!
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