AMOUR (French for “love”) is an Oscar contender for best foreign film that you would want to watch if you’re looking for a dramatic movie that confronts one’s humanity to its deepest core with regards to sickness, old age, and death.
It is a brutally realistic, torturing, and depressing film, a yet so extraordinarily and brilliantly made and acted.
A French-language film, bare of any musical and computer graphic effects and relying solely on the somber development of the story and the masterful realistic acting of the major characters, George and Anne, it makes one leave the theater awfully quiet, thoughtful, and yes, depressed after watching it, particularly about the universal experience of old age and sickness.
The film begins with firemen breaking down the door of an apartment in Paris to find the corpse of Anne lying on a bed.
The doors had been taped and shut and she was adorned with cut flowers. The movie then leads you back to the life of this elderly couple, both retired music teachers in their eighties, and their ordeal with sudden illness, old age, and frustrations of finding care and seeing a beloved spouse suffer in pain. The twist of the story almost at the end of it would shock and disturb everyone who sees the film.
Amour is absolutely a masterpiece about life, sickness, and death. Yet, from the standpoint of Christian faith, it is devoid of any expression of faith, prayer and hope, except for the enduring love of an elderly couple.
True to the European milieu of dealing with old age, it does not show any heroic and spiritual care for elderly parents, nor does it portray any reliance on God’s power over illness and death and promise of eternal life.
The film is a good source of reflection on the hard realities of sickness and death, especially during this season of Lent and in the light of the Gospel this Sunday. In encountering the pains and sorrows of life, we, Christians, find strength, consolation, and hope in our faith and families. We can overcome or transcend any grief and despair through our powerful experiences of God in prayer, Word, Sacrament and love for one another.
We can have our own experiences of Transfiguration here on earth, glimpses of the promise of eternal life. That’s why we’re called even more as disciples of Christ to fulfill the task of bringing hope in people’s lives through ministries of Word and service.
The Disciples of Jesus, particularly Peter, did not want to leave that glorious and heavenly moment of the transfiguration of Christ. Jesus reminded them that the moment had not come yet for him to be fully glorified. They must first go down the hill to villages, towns, and cities to minister to the sick and the poor, to urge people to repent, to bring forgiveness, reconciliation, hope, and peace in their lives. Most of all, the Son of Man, must first suffer and die on the cross so that He could bring Eternal Life to all who believe in Him.
Seeing Amour is an extraordinary experience, not in the sense of robust hope and profound encounter with God, but in being immersed into the brutality and tragedy of life, sickness, and death. “Amour” may not lack demonstrations of love, compassion, and care for a human being, but It would have a more redeeming value if it has expressions of the greatest love of all–the love of God!
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Reverend Rodel G. Balagtas attended St. John Seminary in Camarillo, California and earned his Doctor of Ministry in Preaching from Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Missouri. For twenty years, he has been in the parish ministry of large multi-cultural communities. Since 2002, he has been the pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Los Angeles. Please email Fr. Rodel at [email protected].
