Abstract
This proposed theology of death for Michael Haneke’s Amour, a fraught but poignant piece of cinema, will employ Martin Heidegger’s existentialism to reframe the ethical structure of the film and apply a “lived theology” rejoinder to its perceived hopelessness. The proposal will address the question of ethics in relation to Haneke’s cinema, in particular his seemingly nihilistic perspective and confrontational style. To do so, it will revisit the film itself and examine the ways that Georges and Anne’s love is tested. Principally, we examine the film’s great question, which—in the filmmaker’s own words—is: “How do I cope with the suffering of a loved one?” With aid from the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, this ‘lived theology’ proposal will attempt to give an account of love’s irrepressible strength in the midst of even astounding suffering. While Heidegger’s ethic of resoluteness calls for interiority and solitude, Bonhoeffer’s account of death more satisfactorily invokes a transcendent summons contained within our own pledges to loved ones. Such a theological reading of Haneke’s Amour will draw two distinct conclusions: first, the film exposes the superficiality of any hoped-for solitude or escape from a loved one’s death, and secondly, it demonstrates that the mutuality of authentic love entails impossible sacrifices.
Highlights
In Amour, audiences encounter Georges and Anne, an octogenarian couple living out their golden years in relative ease and tranquility
We must seek to answer the question that Haneke’s Amour poses: “How do I cope with the suffering of a loved one?”
Provoke question of thisinessay— own question—“How do I cope with the suffering of a loved one?” With Rosinski, we can esteem the great value of experiencing the birth to presence of this Nancean blind spot, but the wonder of seeing death afresh cannot provide us with a fully ethical response to it
Summary
In Amour, audiences encounter Georges and Anne, an octogenarian couple living out their golden years in relative ease and tranquility. For example, sees in Amour all the characteristic intensity that Haneke typically focuses into the violence and terror of his other films: “Yet Haneke’s portrayal of their mellow love that, somewhat surprisingly, is just as sustained and detailed as his previous studies of violence and dysfunction, is put to the test by an illness that Anne suffers not long into the film and that leaves her gradually but ineluctably incapacitated. It is this test of their love—and even more, the radical mutation their love undergoes when. Let us proceed to the question of ethics in Haneke’s cinema
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