We all remember Kanji Watanabe, the protagonist of ‘Live’, his slow but insurmountable acceptance of death and his desire to make his last moments worthwhile. ‘More than ever’ takes up Kurosawa’s ideas in a film adapted to our times that reflects on the selfishness of death, the pain of those who accompany and an end our way.
The last trip
The only problem with ‘More than ever’, developed between Norwegian fjords, small villages, lush forests and cabins with no cell phone signal, is that it’s a movie we’ve already seen. As thoughtful as Hélène’s decisions are on her way to accepting a dignified death, they are not surprising, nor is she able to find an angle that makes her essential.
However, its predictability is not an obstacle to showing an exquisite sensitivity in his decisions. Hélène travels to Norway with the idea of finding herself before she dies, but what she ends up finding is the reality of her next few months, in which she will weaken and drown. At those moments, decides to stop being a burden and go through those last moments alone, in paradise on earth. It is an exciting, unfair decision, and, why not say it, with a certain selfish tinge that flies over the tape.
And it is that the great counterpoint of ‘More than ever’ comes from Hélène’s husband, a man who, deep down, is the core of the divisive debates about the film and the one who raises the most conflicting opinions. Faced with the acceptance of her death, we have his desperate attempt at salvation, obsessed with the idea of hope, of potential donors, of a future for both of them. Her head is a continuous stream of ideas: live in Norway, go home, wait for a donor, ask the doctor, hold her until she dies, let her cling to life. Contradictory ideas that crowd the heads of those who have no choice but to wait and accept.
Well nothing, to die
As the third wheel between the woman who accepts death and the husband who clings to his life, we have a man who has managed to heal himself after being on the verge of death, who has accepted his own mortality and has decided to spend his life in that cabin, supporting Hélène in any of her decisions. He is a complex character that sadly remains a bit watery in a film full of edges and complexities, and that in the final part of the film disappears instead of playing the crucial role that is guessed at during the first two acts.
Vicky Krieps is, as usual, gigantic. One of the best actresses of recent years It’s always the highlight of everything that comes out (Look at ‘The Rebel Empress’ and how only she is capable of carrying the entire film on her shoulders), but here she reaches another level of subtlety in a film that a priori she asks for dramatic excesses but that she elevates through containment. If ‘More than ever’ goes beyond what is acceptable, it is thanks to her, who before the age of 40 has already become a great one.
I don’t like to say obvious things like that a place is “the main character of the film” or “another character”, but… Norway. A country impossible to shoot badly, a country that Emily Atef’s camera manages to show with all its intensity, in which the beauty of her nature also becomes a mortal threat to Hélène’s poor health. This story could also have taken place, more or less the same, in the English countryside, but Norway is exotic, beautiful and unique enough to be fascinating, imposing… and dangerous at the same time..
Google your own death
Our society has completely removed the words related to death. There are no longer sick, there are fighters. There are no more dying, there is hope. We cling to life so much that we do not accept that others do not: when Hélène accepts her destiny, our first reflex as viewers is to think that the film has provided a solution a few minutes earlier (the transplant of a double lung) and that, logically, the plot will go that way, that he is delirious, that he can be saved. But, little by little, we are accepting, at the same time as her husband, the reality: she does not want someone else’s lung. He just wants to spend the time he has left in the best possible way. And alone. Her inexorable decision becomes much harder for us than for herself, in part because we live in a society that has taught us that this cannot be.
‘More than ever’ has magnificent finds hidden in its footagebut let me highlight one: Hélène, bored, Googling “What to do while you’re dying” and finding only messages of people talking about fighters, empty messages of encouragement and no real response. It is one of the many moments in which reality makes its way through the cracks of the footageturning ‘More than ever’ into something more than a movie with a predictable plot.
And in the end, we left the room in peace, perhaps with some of our ideas upset and changed, accepting the world around us a little more after a film that does not urge us to “enjoy life more” or to “fight to the end for our love”, but to accept the death of others (and, in a certain way, our own), the fragility of love in complicated times, the pain of those we leave behind. And, already put, take out a couple of tickets for Norway.