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…

THE END OF THE WORLD WEEK - IT'S THE TIME OF THE WOLF

Ok, as we said we are going to do this “end of the world movie” thing with a touch of class. And the point of this post - and in fact this film - is that there is more to the world ending than fire-balls and dinosours. This, of course, is Michael Haneke’s classic film “The Time Of The Wolf”. No special effects here. No actual apocalypse to speak of either. Haneke has focused on something that is probably more important. The catastrophe has come and gone, leaving devastation in its wake. How will the survivors cope?
As far as we can gather, we are in France. A family of four are journeying towards their summer house. An unnamed catastrophe has shaken the county (perhaps the whole world, who knows…) and they hope that they will be safer outside the city in the countryside. The moment they arrive they realize how wrong they were to think that. Lack of provisions has plunged the entire countryside into desperation. Money has no value anymore; people are reduced to “exchanging goods”. Men on horses with guns sell water at exorbitant prices instead of moonshine liquor. You might be robbed at any time, disease is everywhere and survival is a very, VERY tough game indeed…
The aim of the film (as we can confirm from the interviews with the director and cast as well) is to bring a sense of devastation and desperation to people who live in comfort most of their lives while wars and famine ravage three quarters of the globe. A lot of the characters we meet, including our heroes, are as far as we can tell normal middle class people who led very ordinary lives until this nameless crisis occurred. They struggle to cope, they break down from time to time, and they try to hold on. In the end, they figure out ways of surviving, and in the process revert to ancient practices, exchanging goods being just one of them. Stealing has become common practice. If a murder occurs, you need to provide hard evidence or deal with it yourself, rule of law and justice have all become ancient luxuries. The camera in the film is more of a spectator. It doesn’t narrate per se. Or rather, it doesn’t put the viewer in an “omnipotent” position. You know what I mean, that whole breed of films where the viewer always knows a lot more of the whole picture as opposed to the characters. In this film we nearly always know less. I mean, it’s very basic, we don’t even know what this apocalyptic crisis is. There are various hints in the film that it could be connected to water. We notice the lack of animals and birdsong in the woods. In fact, animals seem to be dying left and right. But apart from that nothing. Another thing you can’t help feeling is distinct alienation as we watch people coping somehow, often doing things we couldn’t imagine ourselves doing. And yet we see it happen, well dressed middle class women who could be your neighbor, selling their bodies for food. Stealing. Killing horses and roasting them on open fires.
Yes, it’s nasty, but the whole point of the film is to make you stop and think. You have to remember that this is the day to day reality of some people. And that, dear friends, merits one heck of a lot of thinking about…

OK, YOU'VE WAITED LONG ENOUGH :) THE WHITE BAND

Well, if you’ve been nominated for 2 Oscars® and you are actually a film directed by Michael Haneke, that is already quite a lot going for you. Add to that BAFTAs, various awards at Cannes and a Golden Globe and that is pretty damn good reference. You sit down to watching The White Band with such expectations. The film is everything you expect and more. And as it is usually the case with Haneke, it is neither easy to watch nor understand but once you “receive” the message he is trying to transmit, well, I frankly had tears in my eyes although bizarrely enough I wouldn’t be able to tell you why… Just let me tell you what the film is about first and you can decide for yourself…
The story takes place in a small village in Germany, in the 15 months that lead up to the First World War. The village schoolteacher is our narrator and tells us the story of a series of rather extraordinary events that take place in the village around that time. The village is seemingly a typical village of its time, a baron lives nearby and owns most of the land. There is the doctor, a prominent member of the community of course, the midwife who lives with her mentally handicapped son and the pastor, who is a knowledgeable and strict man, especially with his own children. It all starts with the Doctor’s accident. He falls while riding, and it is then discovered that his horse has been tripped by a wire, cunningly concealed on his way back home. Other accidents start happening. Tension in the village begins to mount. A new-born baby is left to die infront of an open window. The baron’s son is attacked. Then the midwife’s handicapped son is attacked, so badly that he may actually lose his sight… Then the schoolteacher makes an extraordinary discovery. He discovers the culprit of these misdeeds. But how in the world will he explain this to the rest of the village? And is there anything anyone can do about it?
I do not want to give too much away about this one. First of all, you may have watched it /read about it and know the story from beginning to end, which is fine. Or you might not have watched it yet in which case you probably do NOT want any spoilers. So I will concentrate on my impressions of the film and how it made me feel and not the storyline…
Hanneke has undertaken the rather solemn and hideously difficult task of explaining how The Holocaust came about. (Well of course, you cannot have one simple explanation for something like that but he has definitely hit on a very good point to put it mildly). This is a tricky topic, and Haneke handles it with the sensitivity and subtlety that befits a master. The one thing I really liked about the film is that it is not “in your face” the way this kind of film tends to be. It is not graphic in anyway and rather than showing the viewer pictures or telling them a story, he evidently wishes to put them face to face with a certain situation and make them think. Really actively participate in the subject and draw their own conclusions. Use their imaginations. You could just watch the movie without thinking about it at all, in which case it would be “just another arty movie” with “no proper conclusion”. But when you think about it and make a few simple connections to the events of the years to come, well personally I was bowled over. And Haneke’s view is very evidently that there was nothing anyone could do to stop what was coming. It is in short a highly disturbing film that you will watch in a heartbeat and think about for a long time… In my view an experience not to be missed.