It's so long ago that I watched it that I forget the details. My overall impression was that I thought it was very well done and acted, and I know I recommended it to several people. There was a discussion about the movie here on this site shortly after it came out. (I don't know how to even begin to find the entries: "Books that I liked"?) Again, I forget the details, but some objected to the ending. Others, and I include myself, found it believable that the man, with that wife, in those circumstances, would do that. My feeling was one of compassion for him. Taking of another's life is morally wrong; my religion teaches that. Yet I am aware that extreme circumstances can alter my viewpoint. In that sense, the movie was successful in presenting another point of view. I think that our Jim would agree. He lost his wife, his mother and his father to a decision based on compassion.
Jules, the apartment was empty with the daughter in it. I believe that was her last look at what had been her parent's apartment and while her parent's weren't there anymore - she still was.
This was a brutally honest movie that spared the viewer nothing. It showed the drain of the personality over time where this was from strokes and what such long sacrifice can do to a human being (the husband).
We have such an incident here in real life on this board so we know that this happens.
Human life is very complicated. Fear, greed, gluttony, anger, lust, and a host of other threads all weave through virtually simultaneously where the human mind can flit between them so fast it makes hummingbirds look frozen in time - but; the conscious mind is singular and does not have direct control of everything. You don't remember to breath and you can't override your own breathing. The conscious mind will pass out and you the person will continue breathing whatever the conscious mind has convinced itself it is in charge of.
In this movie everyone is at fault and no one is at fault. The wife resists help early. This traps the husband but isn't meant to. The husband wears down steadily and accepts it. The daughter is dealing with her parents so she doesn't see that her father has lost reality. He resents her normal life but is also in line with what his wife originally said even though she can't anymore. It's after he realizes his behaviour is wrong and apologizes that he actually makes up his mind on what to do.
I believe that it's both extremely powerful and one of the central tests in life what stories we weave in our mind about ourselves and our lives. Some cannot bear to admit fault or error and the reason is that you are peeking into the story they weave. Some must be important as their self idiom so they constantly mention credentials. Some are so certain in their low worth they rarely speak at all. All are in the idiom they agree to or they leave it or they visibly fight to change it.
That's why Alzheimer's is still leprosy. In a small village we might be ignored as though we don't exist. In modern society inexcusable behaviour becomes accepted. Please don't tell me how he/she is or what you're going through and by the way we're really close say the people who wouldn't treat a dog that way - except the dog doesn't have alzheimers and so is 'within' the weave.
Except once I learn this, that I am being kicked by real things that actually are a certain way, then it's me that chooses. I don't know that I'll ever 100% get over all the teriffically hurtful things I've experienced now. I doubt it. I don't choose to be the victim of more than I need to though and I don't choose death because I have been abused. I choose to live. And the fact that I will be going to my second funeral soon wearing a red dress where one of those that abandoned us will be dying, shouldn't be seen as disturbing. I'm not disturbed by it.
Instead I went to my friend who had serious mental problems years ago and told him how sorry I was that I had abandoned him in his time of need. I confessed that I had woven a fantasy around that which all [of] us did; but, that now that I have suffered the same thing I realize it. He cried for the first time in the 35 years I've known him. And I am both guilty and the victim.
That man in that movie chose his own path. I have been where he was and I make a different choice. I know where the vortex is. It is embracing the pain and vibrating within it while pretending to make noise that it's all so horrible but carefully not moving away.
That pain is there and I choose not to become it just as I choose not to be defined by my white hair or by the pimple on my nose or that my parents have died. It's hard. I really want to wear that red dress; but, I have to be content with the fact that I couldn't give a flying they're dying and proving it to them makes me a jerk.
I agree with my wife who has once again come back from the brink for a while and I suspect for the same reason I fight that same battle. "More cake!"
mary75: I typed the word Amour in the search at the top of the page and it brought up the post. It didn't come up when I typed "movie Amour" as movie was not in the original titile of the post. Quirky.
I must admit I kind of missed the first few minutes and wanted to go back to view the beginning but was too drained to do it. I had some epiphanies. In the scene where he is trying to give her some water and she spits it in his face I felt he shouldn't have tried to force water on her as she didn't want it and when he slapped her I thought she deserved it. How can that be that I can feel both ways? Interesting. I have never slapped or hit my husband but once when I was trying to get his coat on him and he wouldn't have it I roughly jerked it off him. He then tried to hit me but I was quicker and got out of the way. I have felt guilty for that but now I don't. I see I was at the end of my endurance and patience. It was soon after that I placed him in assisted living.
"I see I was at the end of my endurance and patience." That's the value of the movie for me, too, that it helped me see how, in spite of my love and the best of intentions, I was often driven to the end of my endurance and patience. Then we pile guilt on top of our already too-heavy burden. Movies like this act as a catharsis. I'm glad you posted about this.
Thanks, Jules, I looked up the other responses, too. I said in my reply to you that "some objected to the ending." Those objections must have been from those others I had told about the movie, and they had never taken care of someone with Alzheimer's . The film was so well done that I felt I was actually in the apartment in Paris. I've always wondered what it would be like to live in Paris, and for that few hours, I was there: the view, the buildings, the light.