Amour (2012)

By pure coincidence, I’m listening to Scala & Kolancy Brothers version of Nothing Else Matters and I can’t help to suddenly feel like I should avoid writing up this review because I will be an emotional wreck by the end. Still, it’s going to be hard to write about Amour a week from now, two weeks or even further in the future due to its ability to crawl under my skin each time I think back at its plot, punch me in my heart and make me cry like a god damn baby!

I feel like the problem during the following weeks is going to be the fact that I’m watching Best Picture nominated movies and I have a feeling I will love many of them if not all. So, bare with me, when I give out so many great ratings and try to explain why I love every single one of them for different reasons. For instance, I love Amour because it made me emotionally crippled and above all, it made me wonder about life, love and the simplicity of movies that have the ability to bring out all the emotions without doing much. Though at times I felt as if it was taking too long, in the end I knew it was all for that purpose of showing life as it was  – and the fact that it was in times slow and lacked situations, it was heartbreaking because I have a feeling that it is just like that for older people.

While watching Amour I couldn’t help to wonder about my grandmother and grandfather, I’ve been very close to them as long as I can remember and I can’t help to fear the inevitable. This movie was like stabbing me to that place, that sad place where things will end up and sometimes, it’s not going to be pretty and the end could be just as horrible as it was in Amour. There were a lot of those sad moments, not just between Georges (Jean-Louis Trintigant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva), but also between Anne and their daughter Eva (Isabelle Huppert). There were also moments of sadness after Anne had passed and Georges was simply alone, seeing her at times, walking out of the apartment “with her” – oh how this brings back those negative feelings.

This French movie is horrible at times, it’s realistic take on a stroke victim and old age is rather scary, especially in the end where Georges finally makes that harsh decision. It was harsh, yes, but it also made sense to me and may it be cruel or whatever, I see living without the ability of doing things as far more crueler way of living. Riva got an Oscar nomination for her role and I totally get why, though I love Lawrence and I’ll be crossing my fingers for her, I know Riva did just as well or even a bit better. It’s mostly because her role was strongly connected to physicality, the blurred speech etc – I can’t even imagine how difficult it is to do so. Plus, sometimes I could see that sadness I felt in her eyes so well that it made me cry even more, so much that I couldn’t even read the subtitles and had to pause the movie. And yet, I watched Silver Linings Playbook again and the same kind of sadness was in Lawrence’s eyes – so I don’t know! All I do know is that I loved both movies for different reasons and both leading ladies were amazing.

A short praise to Michael Haneke should be also included because what I noticed a lot was the way of placing the scenes. Especially in the beginning, the scene where Anne and Georges sit in the theater and the attention seemed to be pushed towards the lady in the middle with the green scarf. In my eyes it was showing how irrelevant they were, how little they stood out but in the end of the movie, how much their story was worth our time despite the fact that in the beginning, we might have not even gave them a second look in the audience.

0