Amour by Haneke

  What if you can choose a scene that you already like and try to match it with a classical music piece? My choice of a film is Haneke’s ‘’Amour’’.  The movie is about Anne and Georges’s despite their old age still continuing love and connection until Anne gets sick become incapable of doing ordinary things. As movie progress, we see Anne’s situation getting worse and worse.  Throughout the end, we see Georges losing his patience, you sense that although there is still love between them, it changed and it became something else. At some point, when Anne is not herself anymore and in a lot of pain, Georges starts to tell a story to make her stop screaming for no reason. After he slowly tells a story from his childhood, he grabs a pillow and suffocates Anne. Anne is gone. Afterwards, we see him with flowers, picking dress for Anne and we know he prepares some kind of an ceremony for her since in the beginning of the movie, we saw firemen came, opened the house and discovered the corpse of Anne. We saw him writing letters, then for the second time we see a bird in the house and he tries to catch the bird, and then explaining in the letter as if he was talking to Anne. Afterwards, he hears some voice from the kitchen, he goes and saw Anne doing the dishes, and then they go out together. Then we saw the daughter coming to the empty home, wondering and sitting on the couch, and the movie ends.  In my interpretation, after he kills Anne, he saw an illusion of her and go out, since in the beginning of finding Anne’s body he was nowhere around, then the daughter came to the home after they found Anne’s body and took her.
In first attempt to find the proper piece for the end scene, I thought of the flower aria of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly for the home preparation (cutting flowers, closing doors, choosing dress etc.) scene. I linked the situation of Butterfly’s hope for her love to arrive and prepare the home. And for the killing scene, for create opposition, I remembered the last aria of Carmen before she is killed, contrasting the braveness and strength of Carmen and weakness of Anne at that moment, both being killed by the men who loves them. But then I changed my mind because these arias are too strong, the director wants these events seen natural, there shouldn’t be a climax for these events, in fact these arias would be the wrong choice. Because as audience, we understand Georges do that to end her suffer, and we saw the change of a relationship that is a process, not a single scene. However, there is strong emotion for this truth about love that ne never think. It may change in the future. I really love the fact there is no music in those scenes. But after the sudden end of the movie, leaving us confused, there could be music in the post-credit scene. The choice I make for that part, is not made because of the obvious ‘’funeral’’ resembles, but because the individuality of the piece. And that piece is Beethoven’s Symphony No.3 Eroica 2nd Movement.
In the beginning there is a procession rhythm that we may resemble it to walking in the funeral. But do we play it for the Anne’s death? No, we are walking to the end of love that we now know it will happen at some point in life no matter how much connected you are. Then in 03.02 we fall into the personal feelings, good and bad memories but we always come back to the main melody that means we remember where we are.
At the end, hearing this piece, it is a farewell to their long-lasting love for the first time. The respect we feel, you can feel in the beats and in the synchronization of the steps of everyone in that imaginary ceremony.
                                                                                                                                                                  Ece DEMİREL