Amour

[riczhang]

BOM clearly has some misinformation about theater counts then....Btw, what kind of gross is this gonna end up with? I imagine this might be, or be pretty close to being, the lowest grossing Best Picture nominee ever.

5-10 million depending on how wide SPC takes it and how well the GA like it.

[baumer]

BOM clearly has some misinformation about theater counts then....Btw, what kind of gross is this gonna end up with? I imagine this might be, or be pretty close to being, the lowest grossing Best Picture nominee ever.

Well, it's a subtitled film, which automatically limits its audience, unfortunately. I don't even want to guess what it will make.

[riczhang]

It's got the highest RT top critic's score and average. 97% and 9.1 () average. It could possibly end up as the highest MetaCritic score if ZDT gets just one more review that's in the 80 or lower range, or if it gets more reviews on MT. It's only got 35 reviews vs. ZDT's 44.

[Plain Old Tele]

It's a devastating and great film. When I was a teenager, I experienced my grandmother's descent into Parkinson's, and this brought back those memories in a very vivid way. She was under home care at her house, and my father and his sister cared for her as long as they could, then brought in nurses, etc -- really, very similar to the progression in AMOUR.

It's an amazing performance by Riva and I'm sorry Trintignant hasn't been recognized as much as she -- he did a wonderful job as well.

In my top three of the year.

A

[Jack Nevada]

If this comes to my town, I'll see it again on the big screen

[baumer]

I dont think I can put myself through that emotional rollercoaster.

[Jack Nevada]

I dont think I can put myself through that emotional rollercoaster.

I want to see this movie again, on the big screen. It must be even more powerful on the big screen

[Gopher]

Oh my god this is a great film. I cried like a baby. The title doesn't fool you- Amour is a movie about love. It's about all of love's happiness, heartbreak and reality, and- in its darkest moments- what love demands. Riva gives a wonderful physical performance, but IMO Trintignant is equally deserving of praise. He's the story of the movie. He quietly suffers in this film- so quiet that a friend compliments him on how well he's taking his wife's emmient demise- and it's both sad and cathartic to see him go over the edge and end it all. The pigeon that he captures and then lets go away encompasses his experience in a profound, quiet (the key word for this movie is 'quiet') way. Haneke's brilliance in directing and writing this film is holding back. Long takes, overlit realistic shots, no score, seemingly mundane situations, and a disregard for a real sense of narrative continuity in an attempt to make each moment feel as important as it can be. He lets Riva and Trintignant do their thing, and I can't stress enough, they are miraculous. Enamoured as I am with Amour, I don't know if I'll see it again. Each scene in this film still resonates so vividly, and it's such a roller coaster of an experience. Tarkovsky has that great quote- ''The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, ren­dering it capable of turning to good.'' I truly believe that if people are brave enough, they should see this movie before they die. I'm thankful I have. It speaks wonders about death and love. (thems fighting words, Gopher!) And for a movie about old people dying that runs over two hours and takes place almost entirely in one apartment, this just goes by. So you have really no reason not to see it. A surprise late entry on my top 10 of 2012.

[riczhang]

I'll write my review starting tomorrow, and it'll be up eventually.

[Plain Old Tele]

I'll write my review starting tomorrow, and it'll be up eventually.

But we all know you'll give it an F, so why bother?

[riczhang]

And here we go:

One doesn’t even know where to begin with a film like Amour; it’s so many things at once. Clinical yet emotional. Restrained yet sentimental. It succeeds because it doesn’t try to get ahead of itself, instead choosing to keep it simple yet still telling a complex story. It’s without a doubt the best film that the genius Michael Haneke has made, and probably will ever make in his life. There has been no film in history that’s told the story of love, pain, loss, and family in such a beautiful and brutally honest manner than Amour. The last film I remember to have had such an impact in this way would be Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage but this is, despite that towering standard, much, much better.

One knows going into the latest Haneke film at the cinema to expect a frigid, detached, and chilly film. This is how Haneke operates, Amour is no different. It is made with the same surgical precision as his previous masterpieces such as Caché, and The White Ribbon. Each take is long, still, and unwavering in its determination to tear down, in oftentimes literal fashion, the characters to expose a truth that can’t be spoken by almost any other filmmakers. Haneke isn’t afraid to tell the truth as it is, he tells it with no honey to make it go down smoother. In Amour, we see an Octogenarian couple, Anne and Georges, devolve into our most primeval and ancient selves as Haneke keeps hammering in his relentless march to expose the tragic and grotesquely beautiful consequences of life, disease, and death. In true Haneke style, the opening scene was a work of genius, setting the movie up so that you can focus on the process of the degeneration rather than postulating and wondering about the end-game because the process is where the story is.

One cannot stress enough how integral both of these people were to the success of Amour. Emmaneulle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant gives the performances of their lives in the roles of their lives, as they imbue the film with such a lived in feel that one can only be shocked to learn that they had only previously starred together in only one film decades ago. It’s hard to believe that they aren’t one of the hundreds of thousands of real Anne and Georges out there who’ve stared a lifetime of memories, emotions, sickness, and good fortune together.

Starting with the slightly lesser of the two, Jean-Louis Trintignant; he gives such a heart wrenching performance, that when the film reaches the climax we’re not horrified by his actions. At that point we feel his pain, we cry for his loss, and we breathe his sigh of relief. It’s such a shame that he didn’t get more awards love because this is the type of performance that comes only once in many years. He needed no gravitas, no pathos (because Haneke doesn’t do Pathos), and no grandeur to create a performance so magnetic, riveting, yet understated to a maximum.

But now we move onto Emmanuelle Riva. What can I say that hasn’t already been said? She really is a revelation, giving a tour de force performance that is unmatched in execution and impact since perhaps Isabella Huppert in the Piano Teacher (which was also a Haneke film). At age 85, she is given the chance of a lifetime and boy does she deliver. Most 85 year olds I know can’t even walk around for prolonged periods of time, but Emmanuelle Riva does it all. She does nudity, paralysis, degeneration, and so much more. As half of her body begins to be paralysed, Riva holds herself in such a position that even when she succeeds in doing something, such as reading that book on the Austrian composer, we still feel for her pain and her inconvenience. There isn’t a single thing to criticise about the performance which is executed perfectly, restrained when need be, but more emotional and loud when it was necessary. The way she delivered the lines, “J’ai Mal” and “Tu es un monstre parfois” both of which are extremely different lines in extremely different contexts are nothing short of perfect. One makes you feel for her pain and the other makes you feel for her pain but in different ways. One because we see her so physically impaired, the other because it’s such a perfectly blended moment of sadness and hope; bittersweet.

What makes this film so brilliant and so different from the rest of Haneke’s filmography is that there is a slow drawing and teasing out of genuine humanity. Haneke’s films are clinical and set in carefully controlled and not always realistic scenarios because he wants to tell his story without it being bogged down by the what ifs. In Amour, Anne and Georges are never shown with any financial troubles; they’re shown to be cultured and knowledgeable because this story is one about Love, Family, and the beauty of that bond. Haneke doesn’t want people to say, “Well if they were richer, then Anne wouldn’t have suffered so badly.” That takes away from the story and leads it into a whole unintended and unwanted tangent, so Haneke keeps his films blunt, direct, and unwavering in its story telling fashion. However, Amour finds itself to be a deeply moving, compassionate, and emotional movie. Yes the movie makes you tear up, yes the movie punches you in the gut, but not in the usual schmaltzy unabashedly manipulative way. It’s still a true Haneke movie, but there’s a spark of enlightenment that is rarely found in any movie that makes it transcendent breaking through the barriers that confine it to a certain group of perhaps more cultured art-house connoisseurs to speak to everyone. And speak it does. It speaks in a way like it has crossed your threshold to speak to each and every one of your personally. Few people in the world have lived a life without this type of tragedy occurring, and Amour brings back vividly those memories, but takes them and puts a whole new better light on it. It tells the story as it is. Even some of the vague symbolism in the background contributes to the story, it’s like Haneke said, “It was shot as it was written. Not a scene extra or a scene short. Everything matters.” The sound of the traffic continuing to rumbling on not privy to the knowledge of this tragedy, and moving on as if nothing happened is such a brutal reflection of real life. In many movies, the entire world stops to mourn the dying character, or the dying character and his family comprises the entire world of the film. But, Amour tells it as it really is; even though you are suffering and feel like the world is going to stop turning, it still goes on. Life goes on with or without you; and that is portrayed in Amour. It is the meticulous attention to detail from the small moments to the large overarching stories that is so beautiful, nothing is wasted, no sound, shot, or movement. That as a whole is what I think makes is such a powerful film, it speaks to you on a level that is neither pandering nor patronising.

Amour is the next addition to a long line of masterpieces by the great Michael Haneke, and the standout, seminal work from that repertoire. It’s yet another reason, and further reaffirmation of Haneke’s place in the pantheon of all-time greats along with Billy Wilder, John Ford, Orson Welles, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Frank Capra. History will remember Amour very kindly, as one of the greatest films of all time, simply because unlike many critical darlings it transcends age, gender, nationality, race, and time. When it opens its mouth, one doesn’t expect more than a quiet and understated whimper from Amour, but while in some ways it does just that, in many other ways it roars. It speaks to all of us on a personal basis; it tells a story that we’ve all been through before. It tells us that love is the greatest bond one can share, and that we shouldn’t ever forget our loved ones, our memories, and our history. It builds the basis of the human story because without love, and without our history who are we? Are we still human?

10/10 and a place on my all-time top 20 list.

Edited January 22, 2013 by riczhang

[riczhang]

And I haven't edited it so excuse the grammar mistakes.

[victoriastone14]

Excellent movie I want to rate it 9 out of 10.

[Gopher]

Something about Haneke has always left me cold. He's undoubtedly a brilliant filmmaker but it's hard to love a movie like Funny Games. There's a cruelty to Amour as well (smash cut from police finding a dead woman to the film's title card) but also a warmth that I don't usually see in his work. Amour might be his masterpiece, and it will certainly be the film he is most remembered for.

Edited January 22, 2013 by Gopher

[Plain Old Tele]

I didn't see cruelty in AMOUR, just the occasional irony.

[riczhang]

Just a quick question, it says that 9 people have cast their votes, but only 7 votes show up. How is that possible?

[Travod]

Oh GOD it was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo longgggggggggggggggg and boringggggggggggggggggggg. Oh my God. This is nominated for all of those Oscars? Riva really better not win.

[Gopher]

*punches Travod's face until he learns to appreciate Amour*

[CoolioD1]

Kids these days. Can't appreciate nothing, ain't got no attention spans, etc, etc.

[riczhang]