The Sea Inside

To die for: The Sea Inside takes on assisted suicide with propagandistic zeal

By Anthony Del Valle

Forgive me, but before we chat about the Oscar-nominated Best Foreign Film The Sea Inside, let's talk Film 101 for a moment.

All movies are propaganda, since the person in charge of the film we're seeing has selected only what he wants us to see. When a movie is, say, a love story, we call the "propaganda" a point of view (love sucks; love makes the world go 'round; women are bitches). Anything in the story that doesn't help the filmmaker lead us to the point of view he's chosen is usually eliminated. But when a movie deals with a controversial political or social issue from one point of view, we tend to call it "one-sided." If we disagree with the point of view, we tend to get angry.

This is why issue-oriented films are a problem. It's tough to cover in two hours all the ramifications of a complicated subject.

Director Alejandro Amenabar's Spanish film The Sea Inside (based on the central character's autobiography titled Letters From Hell) falls victim to the narrowness of its viewpoint. Yet, once you accept the movie as at least a part-failure, you may leave the theater content.

Fifty-five year old Ramon Sampedro (played by 35-year-old Javier Bardem) wants to die. The former ship mechanic has spent 30 years as a quadriplegic following a diving accident in his mid-20s. He spends his life in bed in his family's house in Galicia fantasizing about frolicking in and around the sea outside his window. When he begins to actively seek his own death by challenging the laws prohibiting euthanasia, he insists on hiring a lawyer who is suffering a degenerating disease. He hooks up with Julia (Belen Rueda) who looks healthy and beautiful, but in actuality is not long for this world. As news of his case spreads, he becomes a celebrity and attracts the well-meaning but naive and the religious and pompous.

We get interesting glimpses into the attitudes of his family members, all of whom, in their own ways, seem to love Sampedro very much, and have very differing views on what he's doing to them and to him. And Sampedro's relationship with the ill lawyer is richly complicated.

We know, thanks to old news reports, how it all ends. On Jan. 12, 1998 10 right-to-die activists each contributed one segment of a series of steps to help Sampedro drink cyanide. (None of the "segments" were in themselves illegal, which resulted in no one being arrested for murder.) The suicide was recorded and shown on television.

It's clear too early what the filmmakers' judgment on Sampedro is, and we don't get much of a chance to entertain another opinion. A priest who tells Sampedro suicide is sinful and selfish is portrayed as a self-serving twit. A single mother who thinks smiling daily at Sampedro's bedside will cheer him up is a kind but silly child-woman. Is there not a single legitimate argument to be made against euthanasia? According to cowriters Amenabar and Mateo Gil, no. And that kind of didacticism is not just offensive but also not very interesting. The film might be infinitely more fascinating if it were written in collaboration with at least one writer who had an opposite outlook.

As a director though, Amenabar knows how to make the moment-by-moment fiber of Sampedro's environment spellbinding. And Bardem--expertly aged by Oscar- nominated make-up artists James and Jo Allen--contributes layers of weariness and passion that give us a visceral understanding of the life his character is in mourning for. He creates a sea inside, and it's more life-affirming than the real one sitting just beyond his bedroom window.