Mar adentro

Director and co-writer Alejandro Amenabar didn't make things easy for viewers of his taut, a bit overlong but very disturbing story, accurately based on a Spanish man's struggle to obtain assisted suicide. "Mar Adentro" ("The Sea Inside") is gripping and its impact far exceeds the time spent in the theater.

With the award-winning Canadian movie, "The Barbarian Invasions," folks got to see a family along with a coterie of devoted friends address the wish of a beloved albeit irascible man to end his life. In that movie, the center of attention suffered from progressive, incurable cancer and his descent into a terminal stage was fast. Emotional as the scenes were, death was inevitable - the question was how gentle could it be made through solicited intervention.

Ramon Sampedro (brilliantly played by Javier Bardem) is a different story. For well over two decades he's been a quadriplegic because of a diving accident. (Very sharp viewers may detect a terrible irony as to why he ended in that condition because of his improvident dive.) Once a world traveler and lover of beautiful women, he now lies trapped in an immobile body, his every need attended to by a truly devoted family who willingly surrender much of their privacy and time to sustain their beloved relation.

Rosa (Lola Duenas), a single mom of two small boys, enters the Sampedro household out of what might have been mere curiosity to learn about the paralyzed man's plight but she becomes both an emotionally supportive centerpiece for Ramon as well as an amusing but occasionally aggravating presence. A nice performance by Duenas.

The problem, of course, is that Sampedro isn't sick in the normal sense. He may well live for decades more with proper care. So his softly but persistently voiced desire to end his life with "dignity" creates a moral dilemma for friends and relatives who, not surprisingly, react from different ethical and religious perspectives.

Ramon is the poster quad of a group dedicated to changing Spain's laws concerning assisted suicide. "Death with Dignity" is their watchword. Gene (Clara Segura) is a sensitive activist who enlists the aid of pro bono publico counsel, Julia (Belen Rueda). Julia has her own health issues which carry an indefinite but catastrophic prognosis. Happily married to a devoted spouse, she bonds emotionally with her client.

What follows is an acutely sensitive interplay of values and emotions. Ramon lives with his brother and wife, their technophile teenage son, not the intellectual Ramon is, and his aged dad who can't stop grieving over his son's cataclysmic descent into absolute helplessness.

The moral and legal issues are played out through excellent acting and short vignettes including a courtroom scene in which formalism triumphs over any judicial interpretation that might take into account Ramon's feelings and views. It may be Spain but the issues are alive in most countries, including the U.S.

Especially amusing is a shouted, first floor to bedroom, debate between Ramon with a drop-in, lecturing Jesuit priest, also a quadriplegic but one whose hidebound dogma casually masks the absence of a soul.

Special kudos to Mabel Rivera, Ramon's sister-in-law-Manuela, for a wrenchingly authentic portrayal of a strong woman who holds the family together. And the same compliment fulsomely extends to Belen Rueda, Julia, who segues from objective advocate to close friend to a woman hurtling towards a dark fate.

The director imposes no value judgments allowing each character full range to express his or her feelings effectively and, at times, movingly. Like "Dead Man Walking," this movie can support any view about its deadly subject.

No one can stop a person from committing suicide if he/she is determined but the universal tragedy of the world's Ramons is that without assistance, life in a body in which only the heart beats and only the head can move is a sentence no court could pronounce on the most depraved of criminals.

The cinematography is well-matched to the story and the beautiful Galician scenes are an intended contrast to the limited views the once globe-trotting Ramon experiences from his special bed.

9/10

The true story of a Spanish paraplegic, Ramón Sampedro, who fought for decades for the right to be euthenized. This film, along with the Best Picture winner of the same year, Million Dollar Baby, caused a stir that year with their depictions of disabled persons desiring death. Both advocates for the disabled and (unfortunately for the disability advocates) conservative pro-life groups protested both films, and their Oscar nominations. The nominations also came during the entire Terry Schiavo debacle, just to put it all in some historical perspective. The protests, especially from the disability groups, against Million Dollar Baby make some sense – the film clearly depicted, without wavering, the life of a paraplegic as worthless. The film's central character, Maggie Fitzgerald, becomes a paraplegic, doesn't seem to get any counseling whatsoever, no help whatsoever, and immediately wants to die. The film is, honestly, pretty dumb and uncomplex. The Sea Inside, based on the true story, is certainly a lot more thoughtful on the subject. It most likely got railroaded into the same category as Million Dollar Baby without its protesters having even seen it, an incredibly common phenomenon. The film does give time to many different sides of the argument. And it immediately declares that the wish to die is that of the protagonist and the protagonist alone. It is guilty of a couple of crimes, though, and I'd still understand why disability groups could have a problem with it. First and foremost, there's the protagonist's meeting with a paraplegic bishop. I don't look kindly on the way he's depicted. His orally operated wheelchair is depicted as absurd, and there's almost a comic sequence where his effeminate, boy-toy servants are dragging him, in his chair, up the stairs. He can't even reach the room in which Ramón is located, and one of the boy-toys is forced to carry the conversation between them. I had to think, gee, maybe if Ramón lived in a slightly more wheelchair-accessible household, he wouldn't spend his entire life in bed, and might find life more fulfilling (who knows how closely the film depicts the reality). Director Amenábar (The Others) also includes some laughable scenes that try to make this film about suicide more life-affirming, like a cross-cut sequence where Ramón looks thoughtful and his lawyer's baby is born. But besides a few ugly moments, the film is very good. It hurts that someone may want to die when they have the ability to bring so much joy and insight into the lives of others. However, in the end, our lives do belong to us. Shouldn't we have the right to choose? The film's strongest asset is its supporting characters, and the actors who play them. It depicts how Ramón's fight and decisions affect those around him with a beautiful precision. The family members in particular are great, and Ramón's final departure from them is absolutely heartbreaking, and had me in tears. My favorite performance in the film comes from Lola Dueñas, whom I also felt gave the best, or at least certainly most undervalued, performance in Almodóvar's Volver last year.

You can't move. At least nothing below the neck moves. You can't turn around. You can't eat or drink unaided, or do, choose, or effectively decide, very much for that matter.

Once you had a full life, travelling the world as a ship hand, living and loving to the full. Inside, your spirit still soars, racing along the beach, catching the spray of the waves, smelling the hair of a woman in your arms. But now your spirit has been disenfranchised, stranded behind the veil of your dreams. You have become a distant observer of your own life, powerless to get involved, a ghost at the wheel.

This is the evocative story based on the real life Ramon Sanpedro who became a quadriplegic after a diving accident, and it is the film's brilliant interiorisation of his world, making the audience feel and see things as if they were the highly articulate Ramon, that gives it the gut-wrenching force to scale the heights of emotional grandeur - rather than wallowing in the grim mire of a sentimental 'message' movie.

Early on, the audience is tantalisingly entrusted with the attraction that this unusual man convincingly conveys. Manuela, his sister in law, is devoted to him. Rosa, a struggling local DJ and factory worker, is enamoured of him. But it is Julia, a beautiful lawyer representing him that most understands and empathises with him, partly as she has a dark secret of her own. The right to die campaign worker, Gene, is inexhaustibly supportive, and one of the most well balanced characters morally. But with who, if any, will romantic flights of fancy become physical? And who, if any, will help him achieve his wish to say goodbye to the world if and when the courts fail him in his quest?

The Sea Inside is a quiet revelation that packs emotional honesty, a memorable script (using excerpts from Sanpedro's poetry) and superb acting from Javier Bardem. It tackles a difficult subject more thoroughly and engagingly than has ever been done before and kept me wide awake with eyes glued to the screen even after an exhausting day. Its weakest point is that those of a different viewpoint are handled without the gravitas afforded Sanpedro's own wish to end his life. The visiting priest is an object of ridicule and humour and, while this provides some excellent light relief, it smacks of an absence of intellectual rigour in an otherwise very thorough examination of the issues. But this is only a small criticism in what is otherwise a monumental and highly recommendable film.

Chris Docker

If you go to the cinema to be entertained, amused, so as to fill up your time, do not go out of your way to watch this film.

If you go to the cinema to appreciate the depths of human-kind, the feelings of real people, to explore the characteriology of personalities, if you go to the cinema to absorb magnificent photography, be sure to put this film very high on your list, preferably in first place. The experience is profoundly rewarding, causing the intelligent viewer to make diverse reflexions over the meaning of life itself. With 'Mar Adentro' Alejandro Amenábar has surpassed the best he has done to date, and even redeemed certain deviations in his earlier films which smacked a little of being aimed at Hollywood. This is not the case with this visual poem put to music: Hollywood could never get anywhere near the effect of this tinglingly inspired human - and humane - story.

In no way should one interpret 'Mar Adentro' as an apologia for euthanasia; this story, based on the real life of the Galician fisherman Ramón Sampedro, is a cry from the bottom of the heart for life and love, a reaching out for human compassion, for understanding emotions. Sampedro was an articulate and intelligent man who after a diving accident off the rocks of the Galician coast as a young man was condemned to live the next 27 years in bed. 'Condenado a vivir' (2001) (TV) was the first version of this man's life on which I have already commented. However, Amenábar has succeeded remarkably at portraying this man, with his permanent enigmatic smile and witty sense of humour, in an equally articulate and intelligent way.

And Javier Bardem rose to the occasion, met the challenge head-on, complete with a Galician accent, producing an electrifying, compelling, enthralling performance, such that the actor and the fisherman become fused into being the same person on screen. Here, indeed, is an occasion to doff your cap, and softly mutter 'chapeau'. Bardem is driven on in his task by a magnificent cast, especially Belén Rueda, Lola Dueñas, Mabel Rivera, Celso Bugallo (Los Lunes al Sol) (qv) and Clara Segura, Galician and Catalan accents taking prominent part.

Amenábar produces wonderful dialogues as these six rotate among themselves one-on-one, or in groups, with excellent chemistry, thus demonstrating that this young Chilean-born Spanish director is an artist who knows what he is at and how to get his results; his global concept of the film includes his own music, interspersed with pieces by Beethoven and Puccini on Sampedro's record-player.

Whilst viewing 'Mar Adentro', I found myself a couple of times comparing him and this film with Stephen Daldry and his masterpiece 'The Hours' (qv). I refer to the way in which the dialogues work with tenseness and passion and that careful sense of timing in each scene.

Javier Aguirresarobe's photography is superb as usual. As I have mentioned elsewhere on IMDb, he does not simply film the events and scenes - he captures even the feelings and the atmosphere of the moment, deftly catches that look in the eyes, light and shadows, such that his work behind the camera is at once another player in the story. A superb artist.

'Mar Adentro' is another landmark in the history of Spanish cinematography, among the best five or six works of art produced here in the last 25 years. This film places itself alongside such cinematographic art as 'El Sur' (qv), 'Los Santos Inocentes' (qv), 'El Abuelo' (qv), 'La Lengua de las Mariposas' (qv), 'Las Ratas' (qv), 'A Los Que Aman' (qv), and I think I must add 'Te Doy Mis Ojos' (qv).

Superbly orchestrated story of a real man, and those who loved him around his bedside: not to be missed.

In Spain, the former sailor Ramón Sampedro (Javier Bardem) has been quadriplegic for twenty-eight years and is fighting in court for his right of practicing euthanasia through an association that defends the freedom of choice and leaded by his friend Géne (Clara Segura). Ramón is introduced to the lawyer that is defending his cause, Julia (Belén Rueda), who has a degenerative fatal disease; and meets Rosa (Lola Dueñas), a lonely worker that has been abused by men. Their relationship changes the behavior and viewpoint of life of Rosa and Julia.

The Chilean Alejandro Amenábar is, in my opinion, one of the best contemporary directors. His filmography released in Brazil is composed by excellent and original movies: "Abre Los Ojos", "Tesis", "The Others" and "Mar Adentro". Javier Bardem is probably the best actor in Spain in the present days. Their association produced this sensitive drama about a very polemic theme, the right of committing euthanasia. This drama is never corny or depressive, since the screenplay uses humor as a relieve valve in the most dramatic situations. The performances of the cast are perfect, with characters having and defending different positions regarding this unpleasant theme. The dialogs and lines are very solid and intelligent. I noted in IMDb plot outline that this movie is based on the real-life story of Ramón Sampedro. Unfortunately, neither the movie nor the DVD gives this important information. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Mar Adentro" ("Sea Inside")