The Sea Inside

A film set in Galicia, in Spain. Ramón has been lying in bed for twenty-six years. A dive into shallow water broke his neck when he was young and he has been paralysed from the neck down since. He wants to die. Not out of pain; he says the life he is living is not a life, and he wants the right to end it legally. His brother's family looks after him. The brother is against it and says so plainly: as long as he is under this roof he will not help him die. Two women come in. A lawyer with a degenerative illness of her own takes the case. A woman from the nearby town comes to talk him out of it and gets drawn in instead. From there the film runs on conversation. Court, letters, television, and long scenes in one room. What the narrative is interested in is not the argument about euthanasia but the people around it: the film shows what it costs the family, and does not turn the brother into a villain. There is one flight sequence. The camera leaves the room, crosses the mountains and reaches the sea, and it lasts less than a minute. The source is a real life. Ramón Sampedro fought through the Spanish courts for years and wrote a book; the case is well documented. Javier Bardem plays Ramón and was about thirty-five at the time; the ageing was done with prosthetics that took several hours each shooting day. Belén Rueda and Lola Dueñas play the two women. Alejandro Amenábar directed and also wrote the score. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Who it is for: anyone who wants a well-acted film about a hard question. Who it is not for: anyone looking for an answer; the film argues both sides and leaves the decision where it found it.