I watch a film about a woman dying last night, More Than Ever, and I am still trying to shake, this morning, how much I hated it. I love Vicky Krieps very much as an actress and I couldn’t stop thinking about the irony that it was Gaspard Ulliel’s last film—he died in a skiing accident not long after—but I just hated the film.
It might be because I waited so long for it to show up on a streaming platform. I was ready for a great movie, great landscape, great acting. Which, Krieps really did a great job, but the story was so manipulative and I think I’m just so tired of film writers thinking they can take any damn leap of imagination they want and put it on a screen. As viewers we’re supposed to believe anything we watch. In this case, that this dying young, beautiful woman would leave her loving partner, leave her home and go far away to be with a weird stranger to live out her final days.
I mean, a vacation is plausible, maybe, but to imagine that she could show up at the remote home of this curmudgeonly person she met online (by reading his blog, and, spoiler, he’s also dying) and integrate herself into his hermit lifestyle and then stay there ..? Of course, her angry husband arrives to punch the old guy and have one last great shag with her and then we watch him getting on the boat while she stays behind, cut to black, film over.
I mean obviously there’s no prim ending to the story of a woman dying of a lung disease early in life. And sure, it seems imaginable that she would be tired of hanging out at home waiting to die while her friends get pregnant, have dinner parties, go dancing. But maybe the better story is that she stays home and teaches everyone how to live with death and dying rather than running away to a remote part of Norway to die with an old stranger because … because the lake is refreshing? The trees are pretty? We see her hiking over and over, gasping for breath. Argh! The whole thing made me seethe, and I do apologize for taking it out here today.
I guess it is because we don’t know how to handle death in our lives and this film, with such tremendous actors, had the chance to tell a better story.
Everything about life is against death. Nothing every shows us or tells us how to handle dying. So we’re lost, drifting in a sea of make-believe and denial. This dumb film only reinforces that idea—that you have to go far away to die in peace, far from all the stupid living people who don’t know what to do or say when you’re sick.
And while I’m up here on this soapbox today, I also want to mention how tired I am of the language we use around dying.
You die. And when you die you are dead. You are not at rest, you did not pass away. You died. It’s our own fault for not coming up with better words in the first place, but please can we be done with all the silly euphemisms? And you did not lose a battle with life or with disease, you died. I think if we start there, talking truth about what has happened, then we might have half a chance at integrating this reality into our lives: we die.
I am going to leave you with something you will probably find upsetting and controversial, but I’m going to do it anyway.
In my reading and study of death and in my channelings with those who have died, I have encountered a stirring idea: no one dies against their will.
No one dies against their will.
But what about murder? War? Cancer? Isn’t cancer a random thing?
Perhaps there are karmic implications that dictate when one dies. No doubt we have far more power over our health than we know. Certainly there must be aspects of one’s will to live, or lack thereof that play into sickness and death.
I did not author it; I have read it and heard it. But if it is true, that no one dies against their will, perhaps one day we can cease to be so dramatic about death. We die.
But first … we live!!
Most films are crap. Not surprising one on dying is extra crap. Like the energy of your piece.
The film to see is Past Lives - trust me on this.