Amour (2012)

This is the most depressing movie I’ve ever seen.

Amour tells the story of an elderly couple, Anne and Georges. Anne is a professional pianist, but this comes to an end when one day she suffers from a stroke. In dealing with the aftereffects of this attack, the couple’s love is put to test.

This film does a wonderful job of using still cameras to their fullest potential. The takes are long, meaning that the actors are truly acting for longer than two seconds at a time, and there isn’t a lot of cutting back and forth from character to character, even in a two-person conversation; there are a couple of instances when two people will be talking, one with his/her back to the camera, with the camera staying in one place the whole time. In an era where the “shaky cam” is all the rage, some still, smooth camera work is nice and refreshing.

As you all know by now, I’m a huge fan of musical scores, but one of the best parts of this movie is that it doesn’t have one. It relies instead on the performances of the actors onscreen to convey the emotion of the story, which is another testament to the talents at work here. The only other film that I can think of that takes this approach is Robert Zemeckis’ 2000 film Cast Away, which doesn’t introduce musical score until the end of the film when Tom Hanks’ character leaves the island. In both situations, it is the lack of music that creates the “soundtrack”…it’s quite wonderful.

A couple of difficult themes are tackled in Amour as well, namely remembering youth, accepting death, and enduring love through it all. These are handled well, but they make the film understandably difficult to watch.

This is a beautiful, heart-wrenching film that is certainly deserving of awards, but it is depressing to the point that I can’t recall a single part that I actually “enjoyed.” In fact, I think that anyone who says they “enjoyed” this film is lying to you; the love shared between this couple even in the hardest of times is admirable, but the circumstances shown in the film are grueling. Overall, Amour is a piece of art, a beautiful example of cinema at its finest, but I would never watch it again for fear that my heart might drop out. This is why my rating is as low as it is…not because it wasn’t a good film, but because its “entertainment value” is, in my eyes, fairly nonexistent.

-Chad

Rating: 2.5 (out of 5)

MPAA: PG-13 – for mature thematic material including a disturbing act, and for brief language