Journal of Social and Political
Sciences
ISSN 2615-3718 (Online)
ISSN 2621-5675 (Print)
Published: 14 September 2020
Amour: Preserving the Alter Ego
Fatemeh Pakdamanshahri
Yeditepe University Istanbul, Turkey
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10.31014/aior.1991.03.03.217
Pages: 848-856
Keywords: Amour, Michael Haneke, Friend, Other, Responsibility
Abstract
One witnesses the sudden dissolving of the diegetic musical piece into an utter silence in Amour. One finds no departure, but to admit the abrupt and yet ever likely and expected transition of life to death. The concert is over. One is to take a bus ride home gracefully. All is done. Anne has been a superbly competent master whose pupil has managed to surpass her skills. The very own daughter is raised to become a musician herself. The apartment is in the most orderly manner one can imagine. The partner has become his most elegant being. It sounds about the right time for death to impose itself in the manner of catechism to the elite couples’ routine and orderly life. It strikes Anne as a philosophical dilemma, whereas for Georges, death bell tolls to remind him of his most monumental responsibility. In Amour, Georges portrays the ultimate responsibility towards the friend through responding to the other’s elegance, illness, deterioration, and death; he shoulders the aforementioned through sincerity and the welcoming of wounding. The paper intends to undertake a philia-thematic study on Michael Haneke’s Amour (2012) through the ideas of Luce Irigaray’s transcendence of the other, Aristotle and Derrida’s friendship, and Levinas’s responsibility towards the other.
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