Facing death with love

Yesterday I finally saw Amour, the French-language film by Austrian director Michael Haneke that won the Academy Award last Sunday night for best foreign-language film. It definitely deserved that prize, as well as being nominated for best picture.

I would add that Emmanuelle Riva should have won the award for best actress. Her performance is amazing.

Amour (French for “love”) tells the story of an elderly couple in Paris, Anne and Georges, who are retired music teachers with a daughter who lives abroad. Anne suffers a stroke that paralyzes the right side of her body. She makes Georges promise her he won’t send her back to the hospital or to a nursing home. He cares for her, enlisting the help of a nurse for several hours a day.

Anne has a second stroke, which leaves her demented and incapable of coherent speech. At one point she makes clear to Georges that she doesn’t want to go on living.

In his usual way, Haneke focuses on the details of his characters’ lives, lingering on certain scenes that serve a symbolic value, as more than exposition. For example, after Anne dies, Georges buys flowers and carefully cuts off the stems from each one. This is not a fast-paced film but one that takes us through the agonizing process of a loved one’s dying. It shows the ugliness and pain of that process.

We in America (or the West, for that matter) tend to hide from the unpleasantness of death while at the same time sensationalizing it through frequent depictions of violent death. (But notice how those rarely go on to show how those deaths affect the victim’s family or community long after they die.)

Amour defies this tendency. It forces us to face on screen what we will all have to face at some point.

A major aspect of spirituality is facing the truth, and that truth involves the reality of death. Jesus certainly provided an example for us as he faced his (very ugly) death unflinchingly. Amour also helps in this task. It may also help us talk with our loved ones about what plans we want made for when we die or how we die.