The moment the husband grabs a pillow, I knew the film was about to lose me. When he smothers his wife, Haneke greatly oversteps his bounds and remystifies dying. Amour sets up certain rules of being uncinematic in its portrayal of dying. Then it gives us an extremely cinematic way of killing someone. The pillow smother is something out of a gangster film. The person being smothered kicks and squirms, until motion is no more. It's very visual.First, there's the technical problem. A pillow smother is almost impossible to do, since people can often breathe through fabric. But even if successful, once the body ceases motion, that does not mean that the person is dead. Due to lack of oxygen, the person could've slipped into shock or coma. Smothering by pillow is a movie trope. It's not a reliable way to off someone. And I feel this is important due to how close Haneke wants to play with realism.But worse than the actual mechanics of a smothering by pillow, the move completely derails the film's raison d'etre. The film works for over 100 minutes to demystify dying and beautifully so. Yet the pillow smother begins the process by which Haneke re-mythologizes dying. Cache works allegorically and terrifyingly as myth. The White Ribbon works epically as myth. Amour does not work as myth. Simply compare how they're shot.At one point, the daughter character asks the husband, "What happens next?"To which he answers, (paraphrasing), "The same thing that's been happening, until it stops."It's a graceful and simple way to say how people actually die of old age in the real world. And it would've made a heart-breaking end to this tale. Yet Haneke fires this film out of the real world as if from a cannon. Because in the real world, barely a single person dies by pillow smother. Even if the film wanted to finalize the process of dying by euthanasia, that could work. But it must work in the same way that the rest of the film does. By taking the ordinary and demystifying it.Now, you may wonder why I am against un-realism. I am not. But a film is a success when it plays by its own rules. Haneke breaking his docudrama rules to spill over into melodrama is refusing to play by the rules that he set up. Imagine Denzel Washington in Training Day suddenly breaking into a bullet-time Matrix dodge. It just doesn't work within the rules of the film.And a couple more missteps show that Haneke's intention is, against the will of the film itself, to mythologize the story. Because right after the husband euthanizes his wife, Haneke brings back the metaphorical bird in the house. On its own, this is fine, but Haneke continues to pile on.Next Haneke begins filming the man's ritual (implied) suicide. The film becomes much like The Seventh Continent, as that family prepares for their demise. Again, this is not how most people deal with living or dying, and, as such, feels very counter to the objectives of the first 100 minutes of the film.And then Haneke again egregiously oversteps by having the husband see his wife and leave the home with her spirit/memory. My own philosophical objections to this scene aside, the person who rejoins their lover's spirit/memory is just cinematic cliche at this point. And it plays that way.There is a naturalism established early by the film, and it deserves much better than the movie cliches we are given at the end. Unfortunately, the greatest love is ultimately Haneke's love for myth-making, and it just doesn't fit here.
It's quite possible Drink would find Z commie propaganda but that's his loss.