THE MANY FACES OF "AMOUR"

Those of you who know me in real life know, I have quite a number of nonagenarians in my family. So it may be said of me that I think of old age and the things it will bring a tiny bit more than the average 30 year old. We tend to put it off, live as if we will be young forever and old age, if we think of it all, is a slightly more romantic vision of growing old with our significant other (if we have been lucky enough to have found them) happily sharing memories of youth and going through life a bit slowly perhaps, but gracefully, hand in hand. We very well may be lucky enough to have such a blessed autumn in our lives. Reality, however, as Amour not so very gently reminds us, is often much, much less sugar coated than this.

Meet Georges and Anne. They are retired music teachers in their eighties. They both enjoy a healthy interest in music and culture and their bond of love is as strong as the first day they have met. They have one adult daughter who has a family of her own in the UK who they keep in touch with. All in all they are preparing to end their years peacefully and together. Their peaceful world however is shattered when quite out of the blue Anne has a severe stroke. The condition claims first her body – rendering her an invalid – and then her mind leaving Georges quite alone. Georges is now left with the mere shadow of what his wife used to be and has to come to terms with becoming her carer. He also needs to cope with one of the severest tests their love has received.

Michael Haneke presents us with a typically unflinching and unforgiving stare at old age. Anyone who has at some point had to care for elderly relatives will testify to the realism of the depiction. Veteran actors like Emmanuelle Riva and Jean Louis Trintignant skillfully show us the horrifyingly sudden way Anne’s mind unravels and Georges’ trauma, confusion but above all undying love for his companion of so many years. It is no coincidence that the characters are music teachers – the contrast between Anne before the stroke – an able and knowledgeable housewife but also clearly a very capable music teacher who has raised musicians of world renown in her time – to Anne post the stroke towards the end of the film, inarticulate, screaming wordlessly like a baby, unable to tell Georges what is wrong and unable to understand what he or her daughter says to her. Quite apart from being incredibly difficult to watch, it is a stark reminder that it may be our very own future; Anne is peacefully having breakfast when the stroke strikes and has no previous symptoms whatsoever. Or indeed we might end up as Georges, left with only the shell of our loved one; trying to accept that for all intents and purposes the person we fell in love with has died. 

And of course the way Amour is filmed is as big a factor in its message as what the story actually tells us. The camera is often static and placed at a “respectable” distance that is often beneficial for us, the viewer to take in the house as it changes from Anne and Georges’ home to a house that needs to accommodate an invalid and all of her needs. The sedate and minimal movements of the camera match Georges very well as he presents a relatively calm and almost matter of fact exterior to his daughter, the carer and even us the viewer, while it is the tiniest cracks that show his real emotions boiling up all the way up to the breath-taking finale which I will not spoil for any of you.

Another interesting point is that the film takes place almost exclusively within the confines of Georges and Anne’s home. This is actually a very effective mirror of life in old age. In developing countries especially it is true that a lot of older people enjoy quite active lives, for one reason of another it is very easy for an octogenarian to become housebound. So we get a real taste of what old age may be like, but contrariwise we also bear witness to the ever-changing universe that can exist within four walls. This means of course that details of the film that take place outside the four walls get missed – we must use our heads to follow the story, although the effort will not be so great. We even miss some things that happen within the same house, but hey, that’s a pretty realistic depiction of real life as well…

Amour is, in short, a wonderfully sensitive and insightful look at the “happily ever after” of love. It shows us what happens after the sun we previously happily walked into with our other half has truly set. It is an incredibly sad film but not a hopeless one. Love, Amour tells us, doesn’t really die in events like this, It merely changes form…