Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

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Amour (2012)

Georges: In the courtyard of the house where grandma lived, there was a young guy at the window who asked me where I'd been. He was a couple of years older than me, a braggart who really impressed me. "To the movies," I said, because I was proud that my grandma had given me the money to go all alone to the cinema. "What did you see?" I started to tell him the story of the movie, and as I did, all the emotion came back. I didn't want to cry in front of the boy, but it was impossible; there I was, crying out loud in the courtyard, and I told him the whole drama to the bitter end. 

Anne: So? How did he react? 

Georges: No idea. He probably found it amusing. I don't remember. I don't remember the film either. But I remember the feeling. That I was ashamed of crying, but that telling him the story made all my feelings and tears come back, almost more powerfully than when I was actually watching the film, and that I just couldn't stop.

A happy 84th birthday to the legendary director Michael Haneke today. In the spirit of Amour, a film about death, I'll admit here (and hopfully writing this out won't be some sort of horrible jinx) that I've come to terms with the assumption, over the course of the nine years since Haneke's previous film Happy End was released, that Michael Haneke probably isn't making any more movies. I might have kept holding out hope but then that great big boxed-set of his movies got released last year -- I pre-ordered the minute it was announced, only to get an email a few months later that the set was being delayed because Haneke, who was being very hands on with it, was insisting that the previously-missing Happy End make it onto the set.  That immediately read to me that he was seeing the set as a culmination -- a finality. I'd love to be proven wrong but it's been nine years and the man is 84. And also Isabelle Huppert said as much a couple of years ago. Truth be told the one-two punch of Amour and Happy End is a killer way to cap off his career. But if he wants to come back swinging, we're ready and we'll shoot through the moon with enthusiasm about it. For now I just hope he's enjoying life. Thanks for the movies, good sir.