Tender cruel, cruel tender

Domenick 2021-12-18 08:01:03

I have watched Haneke's "Amour" at the Melbourne International Film Festival for many days, and I have been lingering in my mind; but it is too difficult to write something about it to soothe the emotions in my chest. Haneke’s shots are too calm and stern. The two leading actors, 82-year-old Jean-Louis Trintignant (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and 85-year-old Emmanuelle Riva, performed too much. true, too cruel, any comments would seem to have caught the film husband for her daughter Ava George rhetorical question: "your sympathy for me useless," or "if a better choice, whether you would like hands-on?"

in In "Love", Trignant and Riva play the role of George and Annie, a retired music teacher couple who have lived together for a lifetime. Their harmony and harmony are the premise of the story that Haneke has been committed to establishing from the very beginning. They exchanged greetings with friends after the concert. When they returned home, they found that the apartment door lock had been hacked. They were slow to move, but the details of each other's care for each other made people feel involuntarily intimacy with the old couple. . Until Anne was detected with an arterial embolism and the operation failed, George became Anne's "caregiver", and the lives of the two began to decline.

The decline of bodily functions, the decline of brain memory, the loss of personal dignity, all these embarrassments of old life have not been put on the screen, but Haneke’s lens approach has abandoned any polite or sympathetic concealment, and a An unbearable detail is magnified and focused in front of the audience-the weight of George supporting Annie into the wheelchair, the deterioration of Anne’s function stage after stage, George’s patience and impatient anger... these subtle but impossible to escape The trivial matters of life and the scum of time have laid the gray reality of the twilight years of life. The relationship between children and parents, the relationship between nurses and patients, and the last expression of love between husband and wife have further deepened the complexity of the problem, causing any doubt or value. Judgment is in a dilemma. Observing the slow disintegration of George and Anne in life and personality through Haneke's lens, I feel that I am a shameless and incompetent voyeur, a cruel member, and an accomplice who deprives them of their dignity together with reality; But evasion does not produce any change or help to the essence of the problem, and sympathy is only a synonym for hypocrisy and a fig leaf for cowardice.

George's daughter, Ava, twice asked her father "how could this be" and "it shouldn't be just this", but she was caught in the mess of her own life, and she couldn't take care of and care for Annie's daily life, let alone take care of her. May take the place of Annie's illness and fight against decline. In the film, George once had a nightmare. The late-night apartment was full of iron, the decoration was not finished, and the corridors were filled with cold water. George woke up in the fear of being strangled by something indescribable. This is not only an improvement in the narrative rhythm, but also a sign that he will face difficulties in the future. This kind of iron blue is the same as the blue and gray tone of the picture of Anne on the floor when he went home early. It was the color of death, and it was the ultimate blow that life forced George to accept.

But in these cruel and indifferent shots, Haneke still left the tenderest glance for George and Annie. He and her lovingly criticize or support each other, the exchange and understanding in their eyes, their artistic Paris apartment, the honey-colored main theme of the picture and the special pause of the lens in the oil painting: tranquility, elegance, and serenity. . This is the tenderness in cruelty, and this is the tenderness that makes cruelty more cruel. In the face of such tenderness and cruelty, no language can do anything, and any conclusions are purely superfluous! The only reasonable choice is to see, see, understand, and feel!

In "Love", Hanek's detailed arrangement, picture editing and camera control are amazing. The movie opens with a Bazin-style fixed-focus telephoto lens full of suspense. The old couple sat in the audience of the concert. Haneke didn’t give any hints as to who the protagonist was. It didn’t come naturally until the second act. The ground began to move with George and Annie. In the scene where Anne’s patient was revealed for the first time, Haneke asked the two of them to eat and talk at the breakfast table. George forgot to turn off the water pipe when he fetched the boiled eggs. The sound of water accompanied by the development behind strongly contrasted the suspense of the narrative progression. Atmosphere; at the end of the movie, the fragment of George slowly flapping the pigeons and the letter he wrote to Annie recreated and confirmed the suspenseful element. This change in atmosphere and rhythm is very necessary for a single-threaded movie that is based on daily chores and almost all scenes are completed inside the apartment. It enables the audience to actively enter the setting of the scene from the beginning and actively participate in it. George and Anne’s life, to lay the foundation for the subsequent emotional explosion.

The photographer of "Love" is Darius Khondji. This Iranian-born French photographer has been responsible for many master directors such as Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, David Fincher, Haneke, etc. His photographic style is known for his calmness and stability. Use light to express the atmosphere of the scene and the mood of the characters. Whether it's "Black Shop Rhapsody", "The Seven Deadly Sins" or "Midnight Paris", he can use the lens to express his emotions, and the tangible images of the pictures express the intangible atmosphere. "Love" adopts a large number of fixed focal length lenses, slow panning and gradual darkness, which echoes the plight of George and Annie in visual effects; but the main color of the picture is mostly warm, bright and serene. This kind of contrast runs through, and it cannot be placed together with the audience's emotions, bathed in the most tender and cruel.

George told her several childhood stories about Anne’s illness, one of which was about George’s experience of watching movies as a child. George said that he couldn't remember what the movie was filming, but he clearly remembered his emotions when he was retelling the content of the movie to others. I guess this is Haneke’s own childhood experience, and I also guess that this is a hint he gave to the audience-"Love" does not stop at the detailed display on the screen, it requires you to watch, chew, experience, and experience life. Those gentle cruelty, experience the tenderness wrapped in cruelty. It is our own life, yours and mines, the present and the future.

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Extended Reading
  • Kacie 2022-03-28 09:01:04

    After re-reading it, I have to admit that I lost sight of it. What the film really wants to express is the respect for the personality of the intellectuals and their pursuit of the integrity of personal dignity and love that transcends the physical existence. However, the catching pigeon scene at the end highlights the intentional instillation of meaning, which can be removed.

  • Kylee 2022-03-28 09:01:04

    The apartment has become a love grave, and has been hit by both internal and external forces at the same time: the nurse, the daughter's visit, the pigeon and the broken lock in the title are all external forces that threaten "closed love"; in the face of death, each other's love is the only one The spiritual sustenance, this is the inner strength, even "love you to kill you" is the supreme state of love.

Amour quotes

  • Georges: [telling a childhood memory] ... some banal romance or other about a nobleman and a lower middle-class girl who couldn't have each other and who then, out of sheer magnanimity, decide to renounce their love - in fact, I don't quite remember it any more. In any case, afterwards I was thoroughly distraught, and it took me a bit of time to calm down. In the courtyard of the house where grandma lived, there was a young guy at the window who asked me where I'd been. He was a couple of years older than me, a braggart who really impressed me. "To the movies," I said, because I was proud that my grandma had given me the money to go all alone to the cinema. "What did you see?" I started to tell him the story of the movie, and as I did, all the emotion came back. I didn't want to cry in front of the boy, but it was impossible; there I was, crying out loud in the courtyard, and I told him the whole drama to the bitter end.

    Anne: So? How did he react?

    Georges: No idea. He probably found it amusing. I don't remember. I don't remember the film either. But I remember the feeling. That I was ashamed of crying, but that telling him the story made all my feelings and tears come back, almost more powerfully than when I was actually watching the film, and that I just couldn't stop.

  • Anne: It's beautiful.

    Georges: What?

    Anne: Life. So long.