Oglądałem u Krysi z Lidzią: 2.2018 * 127 min
Notowałem: 28.2.2018
IMDb
Mając w pamięci wrażenie, jakie film na mnie zrobił, gdy oglądałem go po raz pierwszy (9.2013), skorzystałem z okazji, że pokazywałą go TVP Kultura i obejrzałem go ponownie. Nic nie stracił w ciągu tych kilku ostatnich lat. Tym razem zwróciłem również uwagę na wspaniałą scenografię: mieszkanie, ciągle świetne, ale już z wyrażnie widocznymi śladami zaniedbania, odzwierciedlało stopniowo pogarszający się fizyczny i psychiczny stan jego mieszkańców.
Poniższe notatki pochodzą sprzed kilku lat. Zrobiłem je we wrześniu 2003, będąc ciągle pod wrażeniem obejrzanego właśnie filmu. Skopiowane z /xp2/www/helps/dziennik.txt
The copy I downloaded was a 2.1G copy in mp4 which I was not able to play on stekacz, the old HP desktop. It worked on bubel (my build) just fine. It's interesting, because some other files, even larger and also in mp4, were playing just fine.
This was one of those films which - based on the reviews - I was most anxious to watch. What intrigued me most was the plot: final days of an old couple. The director was highly praised in all the reviews I read. In order to create my own opinion, I watched two of his films: The White Ribbon (2009) and The Piano Teacher (2001). I liked the former one immensely, but the latter was a disappointment. I detested the prolonged sexual scenes. This experience gave me fears that "Amour" might be equally disgusting. I was afraid that MH might expose the viewer to nasty sex scenes involving the old couple.
My fears didn't materialize. The film was made with an utmost tact. There was nothing which would cause me cringe. Not a single dissonance. Just perfect! Exactly what I have wished the film would be. It impressed me deeply. The story was plain and mundane. The only surprise was Georges going insane at the end and murdering his wife, after she has turned into complete vegetable.
There is no need to write much about this film. I kept thinking about it the entire next day and will watch it again soon, together with Lidzia. Watching Anne's deteriorating condition I was thinking of my own mother who suffered from a similar condition, with the difference, however, that in her case the first stroke had been much more damaging that Anne's.
As I mentioned above, the plot was simple and therefore the power of this movie depended on how it was made. This is where the mastery of MH was demonstrated forcefully. The acting was also superb, both by Emmanuelle Riva (1927-) (Anne) and Jean-Louis Trintignant (1930-) (Georges).
Looking for other movies with Emmanuelle Riva I discovered Leon Morin, Priest (1961). The only version I found on the Web was a Russian one on YouTube, which I downloaded. She also had the main part in Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), which I already have in my collection.
Jean-Louis Trintignant played the judge in Kieślowski's Three Colors: Red (1994), in Z (1969), and also in The Conformist (1970). I didn't have the latter, but found it in torrents and will download it [done]. Emmanuelle Riva also worked with Kieślowski's in his Three Colors: Blue (1993).
Wynotowałem wtedy kilka fragmentów z recenzji Nick Pinkerton z
Village Voice:
Endemic to Haneke's dry, ratchet-turning movies is the anticipation of an Inevitable Awful Event—let us call it the "IAE"—an event in which the incipient horror of the human condition pops out from behind the veneer of civilization, an event that the veteran Haneke viewer understands, upon going in, is part of the contract. The IAE breaks the brittle surface of Haneke's style, and the bracing plunge after the crack of the ice delivers a harsh lesson. His pedantic, castigating filmmaking is a vehicle for these lessons, which have never yet confirmed man's high opinion of himself.
But for now, they are happy, returning home from a piano concert to their bastion of civilized mutual contentment. (There is a vague threat from the outside world—someone has recently tried to jimmy their front door.)
[...] she is identified as a former piano teacher, like Isabelle Huppert in, well, The Piano Teacher, and Huppert appears here in a supporting role as the couple's middle-aged daughter.
I don't recall the words "Je t'aime" being spoken aloud in the two hours of Amour, but they are constantly reiterated in acts of consideration, tenderness, and tending to toilette.
When Georges dismisses a condescending nurse to defend what's left of his wife's violated dignity, the outrage blazing from his eyes attests to Trintignant's undiminished power.
TBK: This was indeed a notable moment, to me mainly as an acute observation of life. A detail which made the film so plausible and powerful.
The centerpiece involves Trintignant chasing around a stray pigeon trapped in the apartment, presumably significant of his wife's soul (I hesitate to use the word with regards to such a flatly materialist film), longing to be set free from earthly fetters.
TBK: I didn't try to interpret this at all, but this comment makes sense.
During his film's lulls, I found myself remembering movies, thanatological and otherwise, that had given me something more to chew on: A snatch of Schubert's Impromptu in G flat major D899 No. 3 in Amour recalled the same piece's use in Bertrand Blier's 1989 Too Beautiful for You; the process of slow physical breakdown depicted through abrupt narrative jumps, Maurice Pialat's ferocious 1974 Le Gueule Ouverte; the subject of an aging couple, Leo McCarey's 1937 Make Way for Tomorrow, a film so mawkish as to suggest that there might be something worthwhile in sharing one's life with someone else before the return to dust. This year alone already brought Yorgos Lanthimos's Alps, a mysterious, funny-sad film poking around the empty spaces left by death.
I jeszcze kilka wypisów z różnych źródeł:
Look carefully at the condition of the kitchen when we see Georges and Anne having their meal on that fateful day and see how things begin to change.
A grace note of the movie is that the distance between Eva and her parents, an alienation that adds an edge into her voice when she talks to Georges and he to her, is never explained. Mr. Haneke doesn’t put his characters on the couch, offering up personalities that can be easily scanned and compartmentalized. As a consequence, his characters can be difficult to get a handle on, opaque, which might be frustrating if there wasn’t so much meaning packed into their everyday conversations and gestures, including what they leave unsaid. Early on, for instance, Anne teases Georges — at least she seems to be teasing — by calling him a monster. She doesn’t explain herself and neither does Mr. Haneke, which allows her meaning to reverberate, to grow steadily louder until it booms.
This is a film that will make you weep not only because life ends but also because it blooms.
W Miłości Haneke eksploruje kwestię, która intrygowała już wczesnośredniowiecznych filozofów pochylających się nad Biblią. I zdaje się podążać za myślą św. Augustyna, który twierdził: tam, gdzie jest miłość, nie ma cierpienia, a jeśli nawet jest, to samo staje się przedmiotem miłości.
Emblematyczna dla postawy reżysera jest scena, gdy Georges wypuszcza schwytanego wcześniej gołębia, który wleciał przez okno do przedpokoju. Biały gołąb, uparcie powracający na znajomy parapet, to swoisty leitmotiv filmu. I wieloznaczny symbol – ludzkiej duszy, śmierci, ale też – czystości, wierności i wolności.
