Directed By Lynne Ramsay

Starring – Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, Sissy Spacek

The Plot – In a forgotten patch of countryside, Grace (Lawrence) is battling her demons: embracing exclusion yet wanting to belong, craving freedom whilst feeling trapped, yearning for family life but wanting to burn the entire house down. Given surprising leeway by her family for her increasingly erratic behavior, she nevertheless feels ever more stifled and repressed. Motherhood, womanhood, the banality of love, the terrors of desire, the brutality of another person carrying your heart forever.

Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, adult language, and some violent content.

Die My Love – Official Trailer

POSITIVES

In terms of psychologically subversive storytellers of the human condition, very few filmmakers have the patience and commitment towards tapping into uncomfortable subject rarely depicted in films, like Ramsay, and considering her latest is an immersive delve into the depths of postpartum and prenatal depression, it makes “Die My Love” a very turbulently testing but rewarding engagement, full of honest insight into just one of the many aspects that make women the strongest creatures on this planet. Honesty that comes at a sacrifice to its characters, particularly within the blossoming love of this couple, whose toxicity towards one another might be entertaining for how two combustible elements can light the fuse of frailty towards one another, while also emphasizing the mental and physical imprisonment of Grace that legitimately makes this such a horrifying engagement, and while Ramsay follows a loose narrative that doesn’t always feed audiences the answers that it needs in the intentionally disorienting sequencing of the movie’s editing, the body language of its characters forces us into a far more primal connection to these characters than we were initially expecting, where, similar to prisons, the passage of time doesn’t play a prominent role in the surreal conflicts between these couples that materialize with an edge of dreamlike fantasy, to what Grace is experiencing simultaneously with kid-like glee and palpable fear to the mundanity of her everyday routine. The storytelling is aided tremendously by the film’s production, not only in the gaps of the aforementioned editing, but also in the sharply bold contrasts of its intricate sound design, harvesting a chorus of chaos that continuously pokes and prods at the sanity of Grace and the audience alike. This offers us the single greatest insight into what Grace is experiencing internally, as her otherwise erratic behavior would make it easy to dismiss her as crazy, but the mixing of barks, voices, overzealous music cues, and baby crying is a constant reminder to the heavy haunting of Grace’s responsibility that frequently wears thin on her frantic demeanor, conveying an isolated loneliness to the peril of the protagonist, which is equally orchestrated within Seamus McGarvey’s masterful cinematography. While the shots themselves involving these lucidly dreamlike sequences away from everyday reality correspond enough therapeutic beauty to break free of the exhilarating underlining of these two unpredictable characters, its single biggest impact lies within A 1.33:1 boxed in aspect ratio, perhaps as an artistic means of conveying confinement and claustrophobia to the detriment of Grace’s spontaneously varying emotional state, and while it undoubtedly adds to the discomfort that I constantly felt throughout such an unbridled engagement of earnest intensity, it also offers endless opportunity to zero in on the facial registries of its mesmerizing ensemble, who each surmise scintillatingly stirring performances on their own meaningful merits. Jennifer Lawrence unloads a performance that can only be described as feral, whether in the animalistic crawling of her paralyzing physicality conveying her desire to breed with her chosen mate, or the bi-polar consistency of her emotional energies, unloading rage, jealousy, or disconnected distancing of the fears and paranoia that persist within, and while Lawrence has already won an Oscar for her captivating work in “Silver Linings Playbook”, I defiantly assess that her fearless level of commitment here is nothing short of her best work to date as an actress. Robert Pattinson also shows a different side of himself, as this immature man-child who is constantly forced to address his own inferiorities, and while Pattinson imbeds his usual radiant charisma to Jackson, in order to articulate how Grace could fall in love with such a slug, it’s the sniveling sleaziness that measures the single greatest example of Grace’s aforementioned isolation, especially in the intentionally uncomfortable chemistry that the two share with one another, in order to tap into the lived-in history and psychology of two people who should be as far away from one another as possible.

NEGATIVES

While “Die My Love” is a gut-wrenching orchestration into the everyday realities of foundation-building Mothers, its execution doesn’t always make for the most compelling of narratives, especially considering the meandering of this toxicity, which becomes tediously unengaging as quickly as the film’s halfway point, before leading to a nearly two hour runtime that tests your interests and likeability in the characters. While Ramsay undeniably appreciates honesty in the portrayals of Grace and Jackson, as a means of establishing their erroring humanity above all else, their constant bickering and miscommunication of the bigger picture, highlights a relationship that seemingly is built entirely on sexual intimacy, and with very little character arcs between them, other than what is being dissected emotionally in the foreground of Ramsay’s narrative pertaining to postpartum and prenatal depression, it never feels like we have a grasp on who they are as living, breathing entities, making it extremely difficult to invest in characters who never deviate away from their constant needs to push our buttons in the worst kind of ways. This leads to what isn’t exactly my biggest problem with the film, but definitely the one that shaped my mood for the remainder of the film, with Grace committing the kind of unfathomable act that inevitably won’t win her a lot of empathy from those in the audience attempting to justify her candid behavior. Before you assume one thing, you should understand that it’s possibly your worst fear come to life, once you see the situation materialize in the early instances of the film, and while this aspect typically doesn’t bother me in films, as it’s often justified as a means to more insight into the surrounding characters, the magnified volumes of the aforementioned sound levels make it all the more detestably exploitative to celebrate in necessity, and it’s one aspect that I wish was omitted, or at least shouldered a bit better than what was heard and shown in its after effects. As a happy transition away from that subject matter, I will say that the film also represents the second time this year where Lakeith Stanfield has been tragically wasted in a highly important role, even as we the audience come to understand what his character represents as quickly as the film’s second act. Part of the problem here is certainly in the lack of speaking dialogue given to the character, leaving it difficult for him to stand out or even momentarily steal a scene from such a murderer’s row of an ensemble that also includes Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte, but there’s equally a stirring question as to why Stanfield was cast in a thankless role at all, and considering his character just kind of fades into the background, as the film persists forward without him, I was left disappointed at how little his importance was explored in the dimensions of the screenplay, wasting away another opportunity to experience one of my favorite actors of limitless charisma interacting with other actors and actresses at his level.

OVERALL
“Die My Love” is a frenzied and fearlessly evocative portrait of postpartum and prenatal depression, which builds a stoic foundation on immersive atmosphere that is every bit claustrophobically confining as it is chaotically unpredictable. While the film isn’t always the most entertainingly engaging or rewarding investment, on account of its one-note meandering that persists relentlessly throughout two hours alongside two of the worst people put to screen, the career-defining performance from Jennifer Lawrence proves her ability to continuously hold an audience in the palm of her hand, and in the case of Lynne Ramsay’s film, gives it just enough pulse to produce enough heart to a film that is practically begging for it.

My Grade: 6.2 or C-