Anniversary of the Amour

On May 20, 2012, Michael Haneke's film "Amour" premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival.

Michael Haneke acted not only as the director of the film "Amour", but also as the author of the script. The script of the film is inspired by events in Haneke's own family: his aunt at the age of 90, suffering from a severe form of rheumatism for a long time, committed suicide. Prior to that, she repeatedly turned to doctors with a request for euthanasia. Haneke conceived his script back in 1992, but it took 20 years for the idea to come to fruition. But, according to Haneke, the main theme of his script is not old age and death, “but the question of how to cope with the suffering of a loved one.”

Haneke initially saw only Jean-Louis Trintignant in the main role. As you know, in 2003, Trintignant, after the terrible death of his daughter Marie, announced the termination of his acting career in the cinema and for more than 7 years he kept this "vow". However, having read Michael Haneke's script, he decided to make an exception for him. By the time work on the film began, Trintignant noted some signs of illness, similar to the illness of the main character of the film, played by Emmanuelle Riva. In this regard, one day Trintignant half-jokingly, half-seriously suggested to Haneke to change their places in the script. But still, there were more jokes in this proposal, so everything remained as it was originally intended.

Not a single amendment was made to the script in the course of work on the film. With one exception. Initially, the working titles of the picture were "These two" or "The music has stopped." It was Jean-Louis Trintignant who once suggested to Michael Haneke at a joint dinner that since the subject of the film was love, why not call it "Love". Haneke agreed with this proposal. Filming took place from February 7 to April 1, 2011.

At the aforementioned Cannes International Film Festival, Michael Haneke's film "Amour" was awarded the main prize - the Palme d'Or. The chairman of the Film Festival Jury, the famous Italian film director Nanni Moretti, when announcing the winner, said that he regrets that the new rules of the Cannes Film Festival allow Haneke to award the film with only one award, that, in fact, he deserves awards for both the screenplay and directing, and for leading roles. By the way, the adoption of the new rules of the film festival was "provoked" by another film by Michael Haneke - "La pianiste (The Piano Teacher)" - which in 2001 received three awards at the Cannes Film Festival, and this caused a negative reaction among many. The regrets of Nanni Moretti, apparently, were taken into account by the European Film Academy, which in the same 2012 awarded Michael Haneke's film "Amour" four of its awards, including Best European Film, Best European Director and Best European Actor and Best European Actress.

In early 2013, Michael Haneke's "Amour" won the American Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Among the nominees for this award were, in particular, the Danish film "En kongelig aff?re (A Royal Affair)" by Nikolaj Arcel and the French film "The Intouchables" by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano. A little later, Haneke's film received 5 Oscar nominations. If in the Best Film nomination the American Film Academy gave preference to the American film "Argo" by Ben Affleck, then in the Best Foreign Language Film nomination, the Oscar went to "Amour".

In the same 2013, Michael Haneke's film "Amour" received 4 nominations for the British BAFTA Award and won two of them: Best Actress (Emmanuel Riva) and Best Film not in the English Language. The rivals of Haneke's film in this nomination were the already mentioned French film "The Intouchables", as well as the Danish film "The Hunt" by Thomas Vinterberg and the Norwegian thriller "Hodejegerne (Headhunters)" by Morten Tyldum. In the dispute for the David Lean Award (in fact, the Best Director nomination) British film academies preferred Ben Affleck, the director of "Argo", to Michael Haneke. In 2013, the French film academies nominated Haneke's film in 10 categories and awarded their Cesar Award in five of the most important of them. The Italian Film Academy (David di Donatello), the Polish Film Academy (Eagles), the Danish Film Academy (Robert), the Danish National Association of Film Critics (Bodil) awarded their highest prizes to Michael Haneke's film "Amour".

The film "Amour" by Michael Haneke received an incredible amount of praise from professional film critics. One list of authors of laudatory reviews will take several pages. However, against the background of hundreds of positive reviews, there are also sharply negative ones. For example, a review by Richard Brody from The New Yorker, filled with such characteristics:

"I don’t doubt Haneke’s sincerity when he affirms in interviews the personal and compassionate roots of the story—the sufferings of his ninety-two-year-old aunt, who had wanted him to help her commit suicide. But what comes off onscreen is the filmmaking’s smirking pleasure at depicting, with a chilling explicitness, a heinously affirmative killing—a peculiarly active variety of euthanasia."

A similar picture is observed among the reviews of Russian film critics. For example, Valery Kichin writes in Rossiyskaya Gazeta:

""Haneke's film is painful, no one from ordinary viewers will voluntarily watch it. Even the magnificent performance of the actors does not introduce him into the channel of aesthetic experiences - the main impressions of the film belong rather to the category of physiological. The next stage of cinema, perhaps, will be the story of the decomposition of a corpse, and in flashbacks it is possible to parallelize the stages of this decomposition with the stages of the disintegration of the personality during life...this picture makes us think once again about the boundaries beyond which art becomes like an anatomical theater, and to which it has come very close."

A kind of response to such criticisms is contained in the review of American film critic guru Roger Ebert, who rated the film with a maximum of four stars and included it in his list of "Great Movies".

"Old age isn't for sissies, and neither is this film. Trintignant and Riva courageously take on these roles, which strip aside all the glamor of their long careers ... Their beauty has faded, but it glows from within. It accepts unflinchingly the realities of age, failure and the disintegration of the ego."

British researcher of European cinema, PhD in Modern Languages from Oxford University (2007) and MA in European Cinema from the University of Bath (2003) and a BA (Hons) in Modern and Medieval Languages from Oxford University Catherine Wheatley writes in her review of the film:

"Amour is a love story, one that is compassionate, powerful and intelligent, and that treats its protagonists and its audiences with respect. Coming from such a punitive director, such unexpected kindness is blindsiding. It is also, undeniably, immensely moving."

The disputability of Michael Haneke's work is stated by one of the most authoritative Russian film critics Andrey Plakhov:

""Love" is not only an outstanding artistic achievement, but also a full of courageous stoicism clarification of relations with death face to face. Since its premiere, the film has been made into masterpieces, but this does not mean that it is among the indisputable ones. The ideological content of this deeply intimate story about the passing away of an elderly married couple, and its very interpretation, cause controversy."

The rating of the film by ordinary moviegoers is characterized by the following figures. With a budget of $8.9 million, its worldwide box office totaled almost $30 million. The Russian film distribution also made its contribution in the form of 153 thousand dollars. 66% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users around the world gave this film scores from 8 to 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Michael Haneke's film "Amour" according to FilmGourmand version was 10.795, which allowed it to take 15th Rank in the Golden Thousand. Filmmakers and financial structures of three countries took part in the creation of the film: Austria, Germany and France. But at the aforementioned festival venues, the film represented Austria. We will not appeal this decision. The film became the only representative of Austrian cinema in the Golden Thousand, which allows us to conclude that Michael Haneke's picture "Amour" is the best film of Austrian cinema.