Art/Movie Review
老年女性之美和爱的思考
Part II
Old Age:::::
The connection I made between Chapin’s paintings and the movie came even before the movie was over. The director/writer, Michael Haneke, seems to have picked up the dried brushes and painted a sequel to Chapin’s nudes with the most honest camera work from one of the darkest perspectives of human reality.
The pale, yet breathing nudes in Chapin’s paintings are embodied in Anne, a highly intelligent and cultivated French woman in her old age. Her life achievement is symbolized by one of her piano students, who is now a celebrity in Europe, if not the world. The love between her and her hu*****and, Georges, is obvious through every verbal and physical movement performed without acting by two genuine actors.
Their love requires a little imagination on the audience’s part to fill in the romance and passion in their youth and midlife periods. Georges still admires Anne’s body while she’s changing in the bathroom. Their tasteful home provides ample clues to the closeness and shared passion between the two, an ideal couple and soul mates that enjoy their middle-class life to the fullest. Yet, their life is simple because of their old age. The simple meals reflect their humble life style and declining appetite, but their intellectual life is still being shared sweeting and respectfully.
“Love” is what the film wants its audience to ponder after a silent ending. One cannot stop wondering why the director gave this title to such a tragic story. There are many other “things” in the story that can entail a less used word besides “love.” However, “Love” has to be the strongest antonym to Death in the remaining days of Georges and Anne.
For Haneke, obviously a philosopher in his trade, a “happy ending” is the most ridiculous thing as far as serious films of such category are concerned. Certainly no death in a family is considered a “happy death.” Death is not pleasant thing to think about, not to mention going into one’s own death in an unexpected and painful way.
What haunts the audience is the most obvious, and that is also what the plot builds to evoke and confront our conventional mind about the stark realities in life. However, how do we know when “life” is over? How do we define “love” when the monster in us steals the love away? How far can one go in the name of love?
The deterioration of Anne’s brain and body is clinically and scientifically researched and thought over. The worsening of her condition is truthfully as well as patiently revealed by multiple close-ups and minimal dialogues. The sparks in their eyes slowly become terror and estrangement as Anne is being succumbed to the disease. Pain turns into suffering; Unvoiced anger grows into helplessness; Pride is being replaced by humiliation; Their shared home filled with books and paintings, piano, CDs eventually resembles a prison whose residents are no longer in control of its security and its coziness. 
How to live; When to die:::::
The film doesn’t play soft to show us how scary and cold the final days of life could be. The characters are not shallow, simple-minded heroic figures that appear in many other movies. Georges and Anne are not portrayed as “good people” per se. They belong to a certain class we can easily imagine, aloft, highbrow, distant and even selfish. Their relationship with their daughter is also far from perfect. But, their family is not a dysfunctional family because of their status and economical standing. Thus, their fragile side is naturally revealed once life takes a bad turn.
What’s different from other “crisis” films I saw is that Georges and Anne do not beg for sympathy. They are real because what they do and how they react are not always right considering their intelligence and background. They are real because their limitations are clearly shown through the frustrations and inward struggles. With minimal exaggeration, the film makes it rather believable that the couple has suddenly fallen into a desperate pit where Death grins and mocks the human concept of Love.
Their unfortunate fate makes it universal in terms of human conditions and the transition from life to death, from loving to “love someone to death” (no pun intended). As I write, I still feel the lack of words to describe my unresolved, partial interpretation of the film. It helps to sort out the thoughts and even discuss it after dinner.
The difficult concepts of love and sin, warmth and coldness, right and wrong, intimacy and estrangement, etc., are more or less invoked no matter how you look at the story. Thanks to the flawless filming and unfolding of the plot, we are prepared to anticipate the shocking sequence. One does not need to have too much medical and clinical knowledge to understand how old people cope with ubiquitous physical pain and loss of memory, etc.. In Georges and Anne’s case, our hearts ache with the old man while his wife is drifting away --First, her memory; Then, her soul.
The end of their intelligent communication means the disappearance of Anne’s identity. She might well be one of the nudes in the above-mentioned paintings where her spirit and flesh breathe in the fresh air in the wide open. But, when Georges has to see her suffer day in and day out; when she attempts to commit suicide; when she refuses to take in one more ounce of food, Georges realizes that Anne has already lost the interest to prolong her vegetable life state. 
Georges is old, too. It’s true that he can walk about the apartment and deal with some daily chores, but that doesn’t necessarily mean his mental health has not deteriorated in its own way. The hallucinations and nightmares indicate his aging mental state. In other words, he is not spared from the torment at all. He suffers equally while coming to terms with Anne’s absence. Her body is there, and breathing, but her soul has left. It’s unbearable.
The abstraction of soul and fear takes shape when Georges “danced” with the trapped pigeon who symbolizes the lingering soul Anne wanted him to have. George’s final act is not a premeditated act. He’s old, and he’s extremely upset, or tortured by the sight of Anne’s suffering and unintelligent appearance.
The film doesn’t seem to ask the audience to “forgive” Georges. He could have used other methods to help his loving wife die (euthanasia comes to mind first), but the limitations of his own mind and the situations have “pushed” him to the end of rational thinking. He is living in isolation now after Anne’s unwillingness to see anyone including her own daughter. He “promised” her that he would keep her from being taken to the hospital again, but little did he know the promise would result in unthinkable consequences.
Death is a lonely business, but Amour challenges our judgment and imagination in a larger social and universal settings. What is the proper and dignified way to end life? To what extent “love” plays in helping our loved ones embark on the new journey? Maybe that’s why the movie grabs one’s learned mind and haunts one to think, but it doesn’t pretend to have the answers.
Love and Fear:::::
On a cultural level, I find the characters typical when expressing, or not expressing fear. Fear is an illogical reaction to natural phenomena. We are all going to die. There is really no use of “fearing death,” but we do. We fear things that we are not in control of. Fear is part of being human. However, different cultures have always approached death differently. Religiously and philosophically, humans have pondered on life or death ever since the very beginning. Unfortunately, all the “wisdom” doesn’t seem to sweeten the pill.
All of us will face our own death. In the movie, fear is not part of the old couple’s struggle. In other words, they have little fear, or fearless, when facing the worst. In the beginning of the movie, Anne was worried about the burglar while Georges shrugged it off. This detail would lead some audience to think that Anne is a “worrisome” people. Therefore, she might be full of fears. As the story unfolds, we realize how stoic Anne is when her body and brain are eventually succumbed to the disease.
Committing suicide does not mean one is fearless. Culturally, I would argue that many Chinese still hold the idea of “being alive is better than being dead no matter how lousy one’s living condition might be.” Again, this is not a story about the “quality of life.” They have had a good life based on their love and the things they have done before old age. They have a lot to treasure and remember together, and their sunset years are obviously comfortable and carefree, to say the least.
Hypothetically, when such a scenario takes place in a similar setting in a different culture, will people react to “death” the same way? Michael Haneke masterfully juxtaposes love with its opposite in a thought-provoking story. Love, the primary theme, becomes secondary in this story.
However, if Georges hasn’t lost his mental abilities, in other words he’s not insane, what had triggered him to carry out the violent act? Where does violence come from? In which dark chamber of human psyche does violence reside? We simply cannot shrug it off after witnessing Georges’ action. We “cannot not to think!”
Haneke believes that violence comes from fear and ignorance. Therefore, none of us is innocent, really. When fear and ignorance are neglected or consciously ignored, people become hateful, thus violent towards the world. There are various kinds of violent behaviors we can draw examples from. To be clear, Georges’ action is not the same as the mass killing maniacs or the cold blood terrorist-like people-hating crimes.
Does Georges’ fear come from his love for Anne? How can love beget fear? Is he terrorized by Anne’s suffering and the fact that life can be so unexpected, dark and cruel? He apparently feels abandoned by Anne after she lost her memory. He is what she remembers! Our identity is mostly what our loved ones see or know. The story shows that children’s love is not enough because it’s a different kind of love. Amour is what two soul mates share which is so tangible between Georges and Anne. That also explains that why love is so essential in life. When love is gone, our identity grows meaningless. That is scary.
The story leaves the audience with some unresolved issues at the end. The daughter goes back to an empty apartment as if looking for answers, but there is none. It is unlikely that we would rush to call Georges a criminal because the legal elements in the story are not in discussion. For instance, is he entitled to do what he did legally? Is anyone of us entitled to put an end to anybody’s life given that the situation being such?
Death might be a lonely place for all mortal beings, but it is also a shared responsibility in a civilized society. In the movie, we see the reality where old people face sudden destruction of life and unprepared for the other side of life. It is a very personal story, but this movie also reflects a bigger societal problem we all face. Haneke simple makes it more urgent with ample honest observations both in life and love.
--作舟，2013年2月，麦迪逊街
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