Preview
THE SEA INSIDE
Starring Javier Bardem and Belén Rueda.
Co-written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar
Opens Friday, February 4
Uptown Screen
It's entirely possible to watch The Sea Inside without realizing it's based on a true story. In fact, it may be preferable. The film works so well as a character study that knowing it's a biopic seems to taint it by association. Knowing it's a biopic about a quadriplegic fighting for the right to die gives the film an even deathlier, movie-of-the-week glow, so don't let anyone tell you it's "touching" or "life-affirming" lest that send you running for the aisles.
The hook marketers really should use to reel in jaded viewers is the fact that The Sea Inside is directed by Alejandro Amenábar, the young Spaniard best known for creeping the bejesus out of audiences with such thrillers as Open Your Eyes and The Others. He continues exploring the cusp between life and death with this film, but in an unapologetically less creepy way.
"Really, what interested me was the human side of everything – not death itself but how we deal with it," Amenábar explained during an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2004. "I just found it very emotional and very inspiring, all that happened. Of course we had to be careful because we were dealing with real people and real events, but I always felt that melodrama should be the (genre) and humour should be part of it because Ramón Sampedro had a good sense of humour and he always tried to talk about death in a very ironic way."
The ornery humour of the film rescues it from movie-of-the-weekness, while Javier Bardem's magnetic performance as 55-year-old Ramón, paralyzed from the neck down after a diving accident in his 20s, seduces us into seeing past his predicament and into his witty, wily soul. But Amenábar faced a bigger challenge than just avoiding cheap sentiment.
"This is a story of a man who can hardly move. Even more, he doesn't want to get out of his room," Amenábar says of Ramón's inherently uncinematic lifestyle, lying in bed in the care of his brother's family. "When we were writing, every day Mateo (Gil, a fellow writer-director) and I just said, 'How are we going to get out of the room today without the audience really noticing?' Then when we researched the real Ramón and we met the people around him, we found a way to spread out to different characters' lives. And the importance of windows. Every time we could, we just jumped out the window somehow."
The film hinges on Ramón's matter-of-fact decision to end his life and the impact it has on his family and two women who come to know him – Julia (Belén Rueda), the human rights lawyer helping him with his case, and Rosa (Lola Dueñas), a single mom who sees his plight on the news. The love story that results is even more heartbreaking than Ramón's inevitable death, because his desire for love and for freedom – poignantly expressed in his fantasies of flying out the bedroom window – cruelly contradict his longing to end his life.
"He didn't want to love, but at the same time, he couldn't help seducing women somehow," Amenábar says. Viewing Ramón as the ultimate unavailable man is another way into his character, one that makes him slightly less sympathetic and tons more interesting. "When Julia gets into the room, he's always trying to connect with her, to seduce her. It's a way for him to feel alive." Unfortunately, Julia is a fairly weak character and the film doesn't fully deal with the question of whether it's fair of Ramón to try and woo her when he's decided to make his final exit.
Rosa, on the other hand, finds Ramón seductive for a different but no less interesting reason – because he's "absolutely harmless," Amenábar says. "She has had several torments with men during her life and then she finds this man who can't hurt her."
The film offers complex insight into the right-to-die debate as well. Every side is represented and respected, with one controversial exception: a scene in which a wheelchair-bound priest comes to change Ramón's mind is played for laughs and ends with the priest leaving in a huff. Amenábar cagily denies having no time for the Catholic Church's position on the issue.
"I know there has been a statement from the Vatican saying that I'm laughing at the character of the priest. And I didn't want that at all. I mean, humour is very important in the film, but I really tried to create someone very human and someone I could talk to."
Like most films the Vatican condemns, The Sea Inside is doing just fine without its approval. It nabbed the grand jury and best actor prizes at the Venice Film Festival, a best actor nod and best foreign film win at the Golden Globes, an Oscar nomination for best foreign film and even the admiration of Spain's Prime Minister Zapatero, who calls it "a hymn to life." Amenábar is coy when talking about awards, but since he happily admits to patterning The Sea Inside after Steven Spielberg's work (his earlier films were inspired by Hitchcock), it seems safe to say that he won't turn any down.
"I just feel that we have given birth to a very beautiful child and we should take care of him," he says of his commitment to promoting this film. "I don't like travelling too much, but I will follow the film all around the world because I think it deserves to be supported." |
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