Amour

The movie, Amour, is much talked about, much liked. But not by me.  It's stark "realism" as Anne dies after first one and then a second stroke and George cares for her almost entirely alone, as the caring becomes a greater and greater burden but his love remains strong, seems to me not "real" enough to make sense.  I know there are people who cannot talk about their feelings, and elderly couples who are totally devoted to one another and probably have never been truly close to an only daughter.  But the screenwriter/director Michael Haneke made them educated people, Anne an apparently excellent and talented piano teacher/coach of concert level students and yet without the inner resources to be soothed by music -- or anything at all really?  One very brief scene showed George singing the child's song, ...le pont d'Avigone ... and the crippled Anne trying to sing along, a very touching scene.  But surely such people would find solace in music.  What music there was was Schubert as played by a student of hers but it seemed to give her no pleasure.  I cannot believe such people would not find companionship and some amount of peace in music.  And that they would be so exceptionally cold to their daughter.  I feel the director wanted to paint as dour and depressing a picture of these people as he could. I think a lot of younger people (by younger I mean anyone under 60, I suppose) are so terrified of death they can only see a person's deterioration as utter horror. I do not believe that is usually the case.  I believe most people have more interior resources than this movie suggests. 

The only movie I've seen lately that deals in death from disease truly honestly was the documents, How to Die on Oregon.  It did not pretty up the way cancer devastates a woman and her family, but it showed how the months before death can be lived fully, not despirately.