Der Kreisel

I went to see Amour tonight

I’m still in that state of limbo you get trapped in after Haneke’s films, not really knowing whether I actually like it, but it undoubtedly affects me. I’ll try to sort it out and maybe write a little opinion tomorrow.

Although I could tell you the most obvious stuff that I can remember at the moment:

1. In the beginning, I’m not sure, there may have been a cameo appearance of Haneke himself, when the inspector barges into the apartment and is seen opening the living room’s windows. The camera turns momentarily to the right and a slim man in a black police uniform with a white beard is seen opening a window in another room, but then that man comes out of sight and the camera turns too quickly to the opposite direction, towards the couple’s room. I don’t think anybody else noticed around me, or at least there was no apparent reaction, so I could be wrong about this. Anyhow, it’s a pointless detail.
2. The two nurses! Unaware of it, they’re putting their patient through all this pointless pain, both physical and psychological, treating this elderly woman like a play doll. First it’s the brutality of their combing her hair, then the way she is forced to see her physical decay in the mirror, although she manifests her wish not to do it. Finally, when dismissed for her incompetence, one of the nurses turns feral on the man, calls him “vieux con”, and all he said is that he wishes her to be treated one day the way she treats her patients. Seems fair to me.
3. The arrogant pianist. He is too young and tactless to handle their sensitivity. He ruins it all by later writing them that his afternoon with the couple was “sad”. UGH! Keep it to yourself. She is obviously disturbed when she reads it.
4. These last two could be of relevance for clinical practice.
5. At first I was puzzled how another of Haneke’s films could have had such an enormous success, I figured he wasn’t so provocative as he used to be, not so directly, and maybe pointlessly? I mean, he used to experiment on his audience, he destroyed money for the camera in The Seventh Continent (1989), he blamed the viewers for the length of the family’s torture in Funny Games (1997). That was one of the reasons I kept watching his films, the man’s fearless. But I guess this one was already strong as is, there was really no need for crudeness. What it didn’t lack was humour, I enjoyed that, that people can find the will to have a laugh in such hopeless circumstances. But it can get too dark, when they describe that one friend’s funeral, for example.
6. At a certain point, the woman, as she browses through her photo albums, says “It’s beautiful”, to which her husband replies “What is?”, and she answers “Life… a long life”. Which took me by surprise, that he would state it so directly, since my interpretation of The Seventh Continent could be summarised in a phrase that is somewhat related, a phrase that I have taken for a certainty ever since, “Death is ugly”.
7. But is it really? That’s probably what Haneke is trying to say in this film, I’m not sure yet, I have no knowledge of his views on euthanasia. He usually prefers to let his viewers think for themselves, I like his method.
8. I figure it works, since the film ends so abruptly that you’re left in your chair, unable to stand. Curiously, like she was. The few people in that room would not stand up, I’m not saying it’s intentional, but it felt weird. It’s impossible not to relate somehow, if you’ve had someone in your family go through that situation of physical and mental decay.
9. In the end, I can’t really tell you whether the film was good or bad by traditional standards; it’s definitely not flashy, the pace was too slow for some people at the theatre, but the acting was great, accurate on every detail. It’s almost impossible to look at that actress again and to think that she is actually not paralysed.
10. Brilliant! And looks like I ended up writing it anyway, it’s not that great a review, nor too organised, but I guess that makes it distinctively mine.

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