Jarring, moving, confrontational, emotive and deeply sincere. Any great piece of art should possess one or more of these qualities and Haneke's film simply possesses them all. And for me personally, I'd like to add soul searing.

I am not that familiar with Haneke's work and the films I have seen by his hand range from brilliant to boring for me. But they all have one thing in common, they are relentless to their audience and their themes. It is therefore intriguing by default when someone like Haneke decides to explore love.

This is a story that excels in its simplicity. What happens when life long lovers face the inevitable, death? How do they cope? In many a writer's hand,…

Georges Laurent does not shed a tear. Age is the greatest sculptor of all. When young, we are afraid, but we pretend not, of what punches life might throw at us. We are afraid of the future, we are afraid of Death, not of our own but of our beloved ones. Age, apart from wilting the physicality and deteriorating the health, infuses great determination and gives humans the solidity to face the pains of life and death unlike any other. Age cleanses us of rashness and enlightens our life with equanimity. Age makes us lose our physical beauty, only to give rise to the truest form of soulful love. Aging is always seen as a one of the greatest enigmas…

When I was seventeen, my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Suddenly, this indomitable figure in my life was becoming increasingly infantilized and dependent. I would sometimes have to drive around our neighborhood and find him: we could take away his car keys, but we couldn’t keep him trapped in our house. Most of the time he seemed blissfully unaware of his circumstances, but at other times I could see in his eyes that he knew he was losing control.

My father’s whole life had revolved around art. He was always eccentric, but now things were at a whole new level. He would start a sentence in 1993 and end it in 1953. If I said “new school,” he would randomly…

What does love actually become when life strips away dignity, independence, and the version of the person you once knew? It’s easy to talk about love when everything is beautiful and stable, but Michael Haneke is interested in something much harsher than that. He looks at love as endurance, obligation, patience, and sacrifice. Georges and Anne are not young lovers caught in passion or fantasy. They’re two people who have already lived full lives together, and now they’re forced into a stage of existence where love is no longer romantic in the traditional sense. It becomes physical labor, emotional exhaustion, routine, and helplessness. Amour understands that growing old with someone is not just about sharing happiness together, but also about…

2012 Ranked 👍

Violence linked to failures in human communication.

The story dominates the film, subdues the composure, supposedly in favor of explaining rather than judging. The violence is not graphic; it’s unhesitatingly scattered in a dramaturgical space that communicates the loneliness in which the characters find themselves in front of society and the harrowing nostalgia that remains of a long life on the verge of extinction, whose memories are attested by an old photo album or by the strained walls of the place where they live. The home thus becomes an island that takes them away from the rest.

Amour is one of those unforgettable films that reminds us that for all the passage through life is short, the…