Amour
Directed by Michael Haneke
Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics
Often when defending a piece of fiction against accusations of undeveloped elements, or leaps in logic, people will say “that’s just life.” That means a film is allowed to not work in a certain way if that brings it closer to replicating the experience of real life. This simply isn’t a fair argument. A film has to try to be both compelling and engaging; not simply aim for the motions of everyday life. Throughout the first half of Amour, I was constantly reminded this.
In every aspect of Amour, writer/director Michael Haneke tries to capture the lives of its protagonists. This is evident from the dialogue, which is very plain and realistic, to the editing, where incredibly long takes in which nothing significant happens, dominate the majority of the film. It is a case and point example of attempted realism.
The film opens with a scene of firefighters breaking into an apartment, and finding the deceased body of an elderly woman holding flowers. The rest of the film leads up to this point, following Georges Laurent (Jean-Louis Trintignant) as he strives to take care of his slowly dying wife, Anne (Emmanuelle Riva), after she has suffered a stroke. The problem with the early portion of Amour is that there is no drama, only two people living a troubled life.
Eventually the film shifts as Anne’s health begins to deteriorate further. From this point forward you are fully engaged in their lives, and Georges’ struggle. These later scenes do a lot to help you forget the doldrums that preceded them, and in many ways what happened before is what allows them to work. But the stark contrast ultimately forces you to realize how dull and shallow the beginning really is.
There has been an overwhelming amount of attention on Riva’s portrayal of Anne. Although she allows for some intensely painful scenes further into her sickness, a lot of Amour has her simply lying vacant. A lot of that acclaim would be better put on Trintignant’s performance, which requires far more heavy lifting and provides an emotional centre.
Amour is certainly not a bad film. It has awful pacing issues, but when it works it is both powerful and thought-provoking. This is not a failure in execution, but rather conception. There is no doubt that Haneke has achieved exactly what he intended. You just cannot help but wonder if he was misguided from the outset.
