In
Amour, Austrian filmmaker Michael
Haneke points his characteristic brilliant formal tact and penchant for thematic
brutality and unemotional candor to the last days of an octogenarian couple. A paean
to love, loss, illness, and decline, the film, without a trace of uplift or
warm humanism, is as much about life as the as it is about the stark, inexorable
truth of death. The movie is unsentimental, unconsoling, unflinchingly serious,
and superbly crafted, and, for the first time in his career (The White Ribbon, Funny Games), Haneke manages to turn his chilly pessimism, intellectual
grimness and detachment into something resembling empathy, tenderness, and
compassion.
The
opening credits roll over ascetic silence, and almost immediately we see the
dead body of a woman lying on a bed, surrounded by wilted flowers. Life and
beauty have faded, and throughout the film we see them diminish, wither away, and
finally disappear. This kind of cold realism can hit close to home, reminding us
of our grandparents, parents, even ourselves.
