Can we control what we want the most when it becomes what we despise the most? What do we truly yearn for? At some point, we all have to answer that question for ourselves. To cite Matthew McConaughey, at the end of the night, when we lay our head down on the pillow, whether we have a partner in bed or not, we all sleep with ourselves. The reality of painful existence is that we should all control our own destinies, whatever they are, and we should find whatever the Hell makes us happiest. However, to exist is a privilege, and we must figure out a way to enjoy the suffering. Without it, what is existence anyway? On a subtextual level, Die My Love tries to say this to the audience in its own absurd way.
Based on the novel of the same name by Argentinian author Ariana Harwicz, Die My Love follows young couple Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson), having just moved from New York City to Jackson’s childhood home in Montana. They have a baby, and Grace slowly descends into madness. Disguised as a commentary on postpartum depression, of which the film clearly states and is, when we have what many could describe as the perfect little life, is it truly what we want in the end?
Co-written, co-scored, and directed by Lynne Ramsay, executive producers Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson have electric chemistry and play the offbeat script well. As Grace slowly begins to lose her grip on reality, the audience is left wondering: what if we all just want to lose control and give into our unhinged fantasy?
Roles in the Family
As society would typically have us believe, or even the seemingly outdated nuclear family option, the mother cooks, cleans, and cares for the children, while the father works and becomes the breadwinner. However, does that even work anymore? Ask any Gen Zer, or even some Millennials, that option doesn’t really make sense anymore. It’s good on paper, but often in execution, it slowly erodes the couple that began it, and they end up in a disgusting breakup. To change, even, is inevitable. Then again, everyone changes, and we must amplify one another, or risk it all going downhill quicker than it even began.
We cannot control every single thing in this life. Maybe that’s truly where things go wrong more than anything else. Sometimes, you have to just let life happen. Even shifting traditional gender roles, or picking up the slack more than is expected, is sometimes good enough. It’s truly the little things that make life worth living, and sometimes in relationships, the little things are more important than the big things. That’s where it feels like Jackson and Grace begin to go wrong.
Is it All in Her Head?
Die My Love is filled with dream sequences, or even lapses in reality, that feel slightly too real. That’s probably the point, though. It’s never quite clear what Jackson’s job is. He’s on the road sometimes, and once in the film, the screen is intercut with Jackson sleeping with a random diner waitress after a phone call with Grace. Maybe he actually did, or maybe she just imagined him talking a little more flirty than one would with a waitress. My money’s on that he did. Jackson and Grace’s intimacy stops abruptly after their baby is born, which is both of their faults. However, despite Grace’s repeated attempts to come onto him, Jackson isn’t having it. The blame can go back and forth, but a healthy balance is a must, and even if one person is trying, it will always take two.
Supporting Roles
Grace even experiences her own lapse of fidelity. Is the man she invites in, Karl (LaKeith Stanfield), another part of her fantasy? A neighbor with a seemingly more put-together life than her own, a scene at a gas station between the two and Karl’s wife, feels like he knows she wants him, but he’s almost embarrassed about the entire exchange. Grace constantly behaves unlike a traditional mother would be expected, even berating a grocery store clerk for simply talking too much. While her dialogue does have a point—“We’ll see each other for thirty seconds; why are you still talking?”—it’s apparently all too much for Grace sometimes, but that’s the point of the film’s discomfort.
Did she actually become intimate with Karl? Perhaps. As the entire film is almost from her perspective, anyway, is it Grace who’s out of balance, or is the world around her out of balance? Jackson’s mother, Pam (Sissy Spacek), sleepwalks with a rifle, and wakes up in a scare when she realizes what’s going on. Thus, this adds to the inconsistency of the film’s narrative itself. When confronted by Grace, she almost ignores the entire situation at hand. On another note, does the death of someone we have spent nearly our entire lives with shatter everything else around us, too? After Jackson’s father, Harry (Nick Nolte), dies, Pam laments that “she doesn’t know what to do anymore.” Is sleepwalking something that’s always been an issue, or is Pam coping in her own mad way, too?
Madness as a Whole
Maybe we all do go a little mad sometimes. After all, Grace spends most of her time clearly doing whatever she wants. At the same time, she clearly loves her son above all else: “He’s perfect, it’s everything else that’s fucked.” Touching herself in the grass with a knife in the other hand, with the moment feeling like it’s almost illegal, or that she’s preparing for someone to tell her she’s in the wrong. Even the film’s mise-en-scène is unreliable. Yet, it tends to work within the narrative somehow. In the preceding scene, the knife is used to cut a cake… Weird. The universe has weird ways of making the unreliable make sense, even if we cannot see it. Should we live out our fantasies, or continue the harsh reality we’ve created, or, better yet, find a way to move forward when enough is enough?
Technical Elements
Ramsay, Edna Walsh, and Alice Birch’s (Lady Macbeth, Succession Season 2, Normal People, Conversations with Friends, Dead Ringers) screenplay is almost a fantasy trip. Meanwhile, Lawrence and Pattinson are at the top of their game. The two performers oscillate from anger and hatred to understanding and patience. This is one of the few times Pattinson deserves to be hit in the face on screen as he argues with Lawrence so well. They are both so substantial to watch in Die My Love.
Director of photography Seamus McGarvey’s (High Fidelity, Nocturnal Animals, The Accountant, Bad Times at the El Royale, The Accountant 2) cinematography is some of the best of the year. With a ratio aspect of 1.33:1, Ramsay’s canvas is full of unhinged chaos and a portrait of controlled madness. There’s a beauty to it all being on 35mm. The film’s opening static shot is the calmest moment, wherein we see the calm before the storm.
Toni Froschhammer’s editing and production designer Tim Grimes’s set pieces are innately mystifying as well. The editing crosses with moments of reality, making the audience truly question whether we just saw a dream or reality. Moreover, after Grace’s brief hospital stint, Jackson has completely refurbished and refurnished their rural house, almost too well. Grace, along with the audience, is simply left to wonder if the house was redone in her head or if he actually did this. Is it more normal than before, almost too normal? Meanwhile, Tim Burns’s sound design is inherently piercing to the ears, sometimes with the score or a simple guitar riff, feeling too loud. It amplifies the film’s atmosphere of insanity.
Final Thoughts on Die My Love
Die My Love is inherently mad. Its portrait of craziness works so well that when Grace burns her journal, we never know what she writes. She merely walks into the forest fire she started. There’s almost a chaotic peace to the conclusion. As a fellow audience member stated, “That’s it?” Sometimes things just lose control, and the grip on reality slips so far that embracing the chaos and walking into the fire feels more controlled than the uncontrollable. If we feel like strangers in our own lives, then we must do something. Maybe walking into the fire is more manageable than putting it out anyway.
Lynne Ramsay, Enda Walsh, and Alice Birch’s Die My Love is now playing in theatres!
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