Review by Vinoo
Language : Spanish
Director : Alejandro Amenabar
Javier Bardem all the way. You can’t not fall in love with the man after watching this film. ‘The Sea Inside’ is the true-life story of Ramon Sampedro, a Spanish marine fisherman, rendered quadriplegic after a diving accident. He fights for thirty years for Euthanasia and his right to die with dignity. He did not want to live his life in the condition he was in : incapacitated from neck below, total loss of use of his torso and limbs.
Ramon : ‘Well, let’s see. I want to die because for me, living like this… is not worthy. I can understand if other tetraplegics could feel offended when I say life like this is not worthy.’
Ramon : ‘To accept the wheelchair would be like accepting breadcrumbs of what used to be my freedom.’
Ramon Sampedro is taken care of by his sister, her husband and his nephew. His father also lives with them and is witness to the plight of his son.
Joaquin (Ramon’s father) : ‘There is only one thing worse than the death of a son… that he wants to die’.
The film explores Ramon‘s right to end his life and also explores his relationship with two women, Julia who suffers from a similar disease, Cadasil Syndrome (Hereditary Stroke Disorder), and Rosa, a divorcee who works with a Radio station and wants to convince Ramon that life is worth living. Ramon is someone who Julia and Rosa end up falling in love with. Julia and Rosa will learn from Ramon the little pleasures of life and through him they will learn to appreciate life and the beauty within, while he himself is very convinced of his desire to want to end his life with dignity. Rosa, with the help of Gene and other friends, is the one who will ultimately help Ramon consume Potassium Cyanide and end his life, apparently ‘out of love for him’. Ramon plans the entire suicide, by breaking it into small actions in terms of responsibility, in such a way that no single individual could be held accountable and in his words ‘While they provided the hands, he provided the head, the conscience.’
Ramon : ‘The one who loves me will be the one who helps me die. That’s love, Rosa. That’s love’.
Manuela, Ramon’s siter-in-law is simply superb and one scene where she is in conversation with the priest simply moves you. So also is the equation Ramon shares with his nephew, Javi, who helps him put onto the computer the words he would pen using an attachment to his mouth.
Padre Francisco : Prove to him that life is not only moving your arms and running around or kicking a ball. Damn it! Life is something else, really.
Manuela : ‘Look. You appeared on TV and said something that I can’t get out of my head. You said that Ramon’s family didn’t give him enough love…
You should know that in this house no one stopped loving Ramon for one single day.
Not one day.
I’ve been looking after him for many years and I love him like a son I don’t know which one of you is right. And I don’t know if it’s true what you say about life belonging to God and not to us but I do know one thing… you have a very big mouth.’
Not just a film on Euthanasia but a beautiful love story. No one else could have portrayed that man with the enigmatic smile and the sense of humour, at times self-deprecatory, as well as Javier Bardem. Brilliant performances by Belen Rueda, Lola Duenas, Mabel Rivera, Celso Bugallo, Tamar Novas, Clara Segura, Joan Dalmau and the entire cast. And, wonderfully shot by Cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe who also shot ‘The Others’, ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ etc.
Few more dialogues from the film, not in sequence though.
Ramon : ‘When you can’t escape and depend constantly on others, You learn to cry by laughing.’
Rosa : ‘And I thought, those eyes full of life! Why would someone with those eyes want to die.’
Ramon : ‘I believe that living is a right not an obligation, as has been in my case. Forced to accept this sad situation during years, months and some days.’
‘The Sea Inside’ won the Oscar for ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ in 2004. ‘The Others’ is also directed by Alejandro Amenabar. Other must watch films of Javier Bardem include ‘Second Skin’, ‘Jamon Jamon’, ‘No Country For Old men’, ‘Biutiful’, ‘Live Flesh’ and ‘The Collateral’ where he appears in a short scene that you can’t miss. I haven’t watched ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ though. Hope to watch his much acclaimed ‘Before Night Falls’ and ‘Love In the Times Of Cholera’ soon. As for which of our films is inspired, I’d rather let you decide.
Useless trivia : Javier Bardem made his debut at the age of six in a film called ‘El Picaro’ (The Scoundrel) before he went on to star in ‘Jamon Jamon’ that almost typecast him as a sex symbol. He, the lucky dog, is married to Penelope Cruz who co-starred with him for the first time in ‘Jamon Jamon’but it was not until ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ they started going around. Some gossip there.
Javier Bardem considers Al Pacino the best and famously said ‘I don’t believe in God. I believe in Al Pacino’ when Pacino called to compliment Bardem on his ‘Before night falls’. ‘If I ever get a call saying “Would you like to work with Al Pacino?” I’d go crazy’ he says.
For those interested here is the entire dialogue from the film
NB : Ramona Maniero, a friend of Ramon Sampedro, was arrested and charged with assisting in suicide but was released due to lack of evidence. She subsequently admitted, on a Spanish Talk Show, to providing Ramon Sampedro with a Cyanide-laced drink and a straw. She confessed ‘I did it for love’. A suicide tape telecast on Spanish Television showing Sampedro talking into the video saying “When I drink this, I will have renounced the most humiliating of slaveries : being a live head stuck to a dead body” just before turning his head to the left to sip from the straw at his home in the Northwestern village of Boiro, has created a major controversy. Since, over 3000 people have come forward to sign a petition saying they assisted Ramon Sampedro commit suicide, rather end his life with dignity. Here is the video
[vimeo clip_id=”10109625” width=”490″ height=””]
The rough translation of the Spanish thanks to a good friend from Sweden.
‘One wants to die because one wants to move to another place. Anywhere. And if to go one has to die then you go (you do it).
Imagine what it is to have a healthy person, 25 years old, and suddenly you break your neck and you enter another world.
If you (the judge) see yourself in this situation all your life like this, perhaps you could understand the reasons to decide that life exist no more (one does not live anymore)
Subtitles:
Ramon Sampedro “Right to die”
Born in 1943 in Xuno, A Coruna
When he was 25 years old he had an accident that left him paralyzed.
He decided to die and started a legal process in order to make it.
Alejandro Amenabar made the movie “Mar adentro” based on his (Sampedro) life.
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