2012 downer
Rating: 17/20
Plot: An old couple adapts after the wife has a stroke.
Michael Haneke gives his movies and their characters so much room to breathe. Maybe more than any other living director, Haneke has the best chance to have a technique named after him–the Haneke, in which the director chooses to have absolutely nothing happening on a screen to force the viewer to be alone with no other choice but to contemplate what is happening, force the reader to be alone with his own thoughts for an amount of time that could very well make him uncomfortable.
Here, we get shots of empty rooms, a woman vacuuming, a former student literally just sitting in a chair waiting for the other characters to come in, black screens, characters with their backs to us, a scene at a concert (the only scene I can remember that takes place outside the couple’s home, now that I think about it) where only the audience is shown. It’s unconventional, but definitely not in a loud way, only because directors aren’t supposed to show us things that are this boring. And here’s a word of warning: You really might be bored with this drawn-out melancholy, a meditation on the mundane. I found it poetic and extremely moving, mostly because of what went unspoken in the movie.
The guy helping her on and off the toilet, washing her hair, cutting her food. They’re actions that deepen a relationship that a bunch of words and images in a two-hour movie are never going to help us understand. It’s really beautiful, and the pair of actors–Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva–are both so good. Especially Riva who, along with some help from the make-up department, manages to transform so much from the beginning to the end of this movie.
And Trintignant just soaks her performance into his somehow. There’s so much loss in his eyes, and I’m not sure if that’s acting or if it’s just eyes, but it’s heartbreaking. Theirs is a relationship eroded by time and what time does to a person, an idea that makes the deliberate pace of this movie even more appropriate. It’s a beautiful and devastating story. Oh, and did I mention there’s a nude scene? Hell yeah, there is! From the intriguing opener to the poignant end, this is hard to watch, partly because it’s slow and sad but mostly because it’s just so human.
My favorite thing I’ve read about this movie: There’s a scene where the old man tries to get a pigeon out of his house by throwing a blanket or something on it. Like most scenes in this, it seems like it goes on for too long. Trintignant said that it took a very long time to film the scene because Haneke kept trying to direct the pigeon. That’s awesome.
