Alejandro Amenábar's latest movie, The Sea Inside , is a deep, intense study of a man's battle for the right to die. Credited as the film's screenwriter, producer, director, composer and film editor, he talks to Michael Dwyer about multi-tasking and the demands of tackling a true story
In this era of ill-disguised vanity exercises, hyphenates abound in the film industry as so many actors fancy themselves as directors and many directors opt to write their own screenplays. Alejandro Amenábar has more strings to his bow than most, taking five credits on his movies - as screenwriter, producer, director, composer and film editor, but he insists his multi-tasking is not an ego trip.
"This is the way I've always worked ever since I made short films," he shrugged when we talked in London recently. "It's just the way I like to work. When I'm preparing a film, writing the screenplay and thinking about casting, my ideas for the music are already running through my head. If I had to work with another composer, I probably would interfere all the time by bringing up my own ideas, so it's best that I write my own scores." Amenábar looks so boyish that he could pass for 25 or younger, although he will be 33 at the end of next month. He was born in Santiago, Chile, but his Chilean father and Spanish mother fled to Madrid a year later, during the Pinochet coup of 1973.
Studying in the science faculty at Complutense University in Madrid, Amenábar took a film course and was failed by his professor. He opted to learn film-making the practical way, by doing it himself. When he was 19, he wrote, produced, directed, scored and acted in the short film, Himenoptero, after which he named his production company, and it won several awards on the festival circuit.
After a few more shorts, he directed his first feature, Tesis, when he was 23. This imaginative thriller featured Ana Torrent as a film student who discovers a snuff movie in the college archive, and Amenábar named the villain Castro after the professor who had failed him in college - although he later apologised for this.
"I think Jim Sheridan still has the remake rights to Tesis," he says. "I went to Ireland to meet Jim and his family a few years ago, and that was very enjoyable."
A year after Tesis came Amenábar's even more impressive Abra los Ojos (Open Your Eyes), a complex psychological thriller in which a handsome young man is disfigured in an accident. It featured Eduardo Noriega and Penelope Cruz, and Tom Cruise bought the remake rights and starred in the US version directed by Cameron Crowe, but the qualities of the original got lost in translation.
Cruise was an executive producer on Amenábar's next film, his first in the English language, The Others, the spooky, atmosphere-steeped ghost story starring Nicole Kidman. His fourth film, The Sea Inside (Mar Adentro), continues Amenábar's preoccupation with the meaning of life - and death - which, I suggest to him, is unusual for a director so young.
"I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with that," he replies. "But when I look back, it's true that my films deal with those themes. I am interested in how we as individuals deal with the fact of death, that there is an end to the lives we have now - independently of the fact that there could be another beginning, or not." Does he believe in a life after death? "Actually, I don't. I'm an agnostic, which means I don't know. But just in case there's nothing, I prefer to see things from a human perspective. And I still think that I'm a moral person. I try to find sense in life itself and in our day-to-day experiences."
A quadriplegic man's claim for the right to suicide is the theme of The Sea Inside, Amenábar's masterly, thoughtful drama based on the experiences of Ramon Sampedro, a former ship's mechanic who was paralysed from the neck down after a diving accident when he was 26. He spent most of three decades confined to a bed as he fought his legal case "to die with dignity". When Sampedro finally arranged for his assisted suicide in January 1998, he had it videotaped.
"His final speech was shown on Spanish television after he died and it seemed like everyone in Spain saw it," Amenábar says. "The agony was cut out, but there was a lot of controversy about if it should have been shown or not. My impression was that Sampedro wanted people to see it. After I decided to make the film, I saw the whole video, and it wasn't easy to watch, because of the agony it showed.
"I had doubts about showing it in my film, because even though the film deals with death, I did not want to show something that was too difficult for the audience to watch. But I also felt it was important for the audience to know that he had suffered - because the government would not contemplate his case, he had to suffer. I hope I found a way of showing it, but didn't make it too strong for the audience to watch. I decided to connect it with the past by showing the accident as it happened to him, and the contrast between his life before and after the accident."
Although the film has been attacked as being pro-euthanasia, it also shows that the lawyer who supports Sampedro's case makes the decision that she wants to live when she contracts a degenerative disease. "When you are dealing with themes like this in a film, you have to be very careful," Amenábar says. "You don't want the film to be an insult to all the people who want to live, no matter what their disability is. I wanted to show both sides and I wanted to show that duality of life and death.
"Of course, it will make people think about the subject of euthanasia. When I first saw Ramon on TV, the first question I asked myself was if I would want to die if I was in his situation. You can't be sure about these matters unless it really happens to you, of course, but right now, I believe I would not want to die if I was in Ramon's situation. At the same time, I believe he is right when he says his life belongs to him and it is his right if he wants to live or die."
The moral dilemma at the core of the film is vividly expressed in a single, haunting line of dialogue, when Ramon's father laments the fact that it's hard enough to know your son is dying, but even worse to know that that's what he wants. "I know Ramon's father really loved his son and he misses him a lot," says Amenábar. "But he was so respectful of Ramon's wishes that he would not say anything to him that related to his intention to die. I think Ramon's brother was much more direct in telling Ramon he didn't want him to die."
Amenábar was drawn to the subject when he read Sampedro's book, Letters From Hell. "Ramon's book is basically philosophy and poetry," he says. "The story of his life is not really there. When I was reading the book, I knew I had to do a lot of research to tell his story. I talked to his friends and relatives, who told me about Ramon's private life. Then there were some stories that were not true. Some church representatives claimed that Ramon was drawing attention to himself because his family did not love him, or that he was depressed, or that he was insane. All that really hurt the family."
Working for the first time on a film based on a true story, about people who are almost all still alive, presented Amenábar with a responsibility that did not arise in his earlier, fictitious films. "It has to concern you," he says. "First, you need to get clearances from all the people involved, while at the same time you don't want to feel tied up or compromised because of that. For instance, it was important for me to have different sources - not just the family, but Ramon's friends - so that I could draw on all these different voices and find what was common in what they said, and then I could form an objective perspective.
"But I had to make some changes, too. Ramon had two nephews and three nieces, and I did not want to have so many children in the movie as it would have been too distracting for me and for the audience, so I compressed them all into the composite character of just one nephew.
"And for dramatic purposes I included a scene where Ramon cries in front of his sister-in-law. Everyone told me that if he ever cried, he never did it in front of the family because he didn't want anyone to feel sorry for him. But I felt the story would be more credible for the audience if we had a scene that showed him crying."
Amenábar's treatment of the movie's themes is profoundly moving and reduces the viewer to tears, yet he never lets it sink into manipulative sentimentality. "I did not feel I was holding back my own emotions," he says. "But the characters themselves are holding emotions the whole time. When I was told the story of the family and then saw the documentary, it was very moving to me that I could feel there was something so strong and so profound going on, but they wouldn't talk about it.
"From the performing point of view, I just tried to get the actors to interact as honestly as possible. I was very careful with the casting, especially in getting Javier to play Ramon. He was the perfect choice, because he really inhabits the character and lets himself be carried away deep into the role."
Javier Bardem, the gifted Spanish star of Jamon, Jamon, Live Flesh and Before Night Falls, plays Sampedro in a wonderfully expressive and perfectly judged performance that involved spending most of the 10-week shoot lying in bed and relying on just his eyes and voice to communicate the complex emotions character he feels.
Although Sampedro is in his mid-fifties for almost all of the film, Amenábar insisted on casting Bardem, who is 35. "I believe that Javier is the best actor Spain has ever produced," he says. "When I offered him the part, I told him he could back out whenever he wanted, but that never arose."
Two weeks ago, at the Goya awards, the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars, Amenábar's film made history, winning in 14 of the 15 categories in which it was nominated, including best film, director and actor. Shamefully, Bardem's remarkable performance was passed over in the recent Academy Award nominations, but The Sea Inside is flying the Spanish flag in the Oscar category for best foreign-language film, and it well deserves to win.
The Sea Inside will be shown at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival on Sunday night. It goes on limited release at Irish cinemas from next Friday
