Movie Review SSJ

Europeans may have reached a new stage of development, where food, drink, life planning, love, workplace affairs, etc. have long since ceased to be their main focus.

A film screened at this year’s Beijing International Film Festival once again proves this point.

The film “Silent Heart”, directed by Danish director Billy August, tells the story of the female protagonist who, after suffering from a terminal illness and about to lose various functions in her body, agrees with her family that she should take medication to commit suicide.

Compared to other parts of the world, European filmmakers are more interested in grand and philosophical topics such as life and death. Silent Heart” shelves the conflicts of the main characters in a closed space, euphemistically telling the grief in the hearts of the heroine’s husband, daughter and grandson, and the chamber drama makes the whole film even more melancholy.

The heroine communicated with her two daughters over and over again in the preceding months, hoping that they would understand and support her decision to commit suicide. After receiving a positive answer, the actress invites all her relatives to spend the last weekend at home together.

But facing death is not as easy as playing house after all. After reliving the family feeling with her parents, the conflicts piled up between the relatives are stirred up.

The first two-thirds of the film is very good. The pace is properly controlled, and the characters’ dialogues are to the point, and many details are designed to reflect the different personalities of different characters, such as the sister who is afraid of avoiding her mother’s farewell ceremony and throws the car keys into the puddle in front of the house; such as the strict and restrained sister who keeps smiling at everyone throughout.

One of the best scenes is when the whole family sits around smoking weed. The most unreliable-looking young brother-in-law contributed the most classic line of the play: “Usually we spend our days like years, but those years passed in an instant.” The actress laughs and reaches out to her son-in-law, “Here, give me a drag, I’ve never tried weed.”

However, the film deflates in the last part. The director suddenly inserted several reversals, such as the sister who wanted to prevent her mother from killing herself actually figured it out, while the sister who had been calm and optimistic called the police…

The movie is not the more dramatic the more watchable ah, break yourself to create an hour of fullness and sophistication, the director of what you are trying to do? Attempt to use a more dramatic plot to enrich the story to impress people? A good reversal is unexpected, but reasonable. The reversal for the sake of reversal will often be botched. A point of knowledge, knock on wood!

Also because of this flaw, “The Silent Heart” immediately fell behind other films of its genre. Another French film, “Spring of the Dead”, is one of the best “euthanasia” films. The film restrains the emotions of the characters throughout the film, and the rhythm of the story is controlled in a relaxed manner, making the audience tear up without realizing it.

Last year, the Beijing International Film Festival also screened a film of the same genre called “The Last Lesson”, which was also more beautifully finished than “The Silent Heart”, and the whole work was completed in one go. A mother who plans to be euthanized and her son and daughter who disagree with her euthanasia, “The Last Lesson” chooses to face life and death with an optimistic and open-minded attitude, with a grim but heartwarming ending. Director Michael Haneke’s film “Love” actually explores the same theme: when we are old and have nothing to live for, when we are terminally ill, should we let the passage of time take away our broken and tattered lives, or should we leave with dignity? As I have written before, I believe that death can only be encountered, not understood.

For most people, death is an abstract proposition. Because we cannot choose the time of death, we tend to forget its existence.

But if you choose “euthanasia”, you and the people around you will have to face it. Your fear may be that you will be forgotten after death, that you will lose everything you have worked for all your life, that you will know nothing about the world after death.

What are the people around you worried about? After you die, your likeness will still keep flashing in their heads, but this memory will not be renewed and will continue to fade with time. What is the taste of my father’s best fish? What was the mother’s favorite song?

But European filmmakers are not sad. Just like the films described above, they do show the audience the coldness of death, but they also release love through human intelligence and human emotions without limits. After all, compared to everything in the universe, man is really not even a grain of dust.