Narrating the End of Life

Representation of Death in Michael Haneke’s Love

Abstract

Michael Haneke’s feature film Love (2012) revolves around the drastic depiction of euthanasia and addresses questions of death, redemption and the ethics behind it. The film deals with topics such as old age, illness and dying, particularly the responsibility and moral dilemma that caregivers face in palliative care. Love addresses these debates in the context of narrative ethics through a continuous external focalization of Anne’s suffering: The film is not focalized through the protagonist Anne’s perception, but through her husband Georges’ whose feelings and struggles while caring for his wife lie at the narrative center of the film. By narrating the course of Anne’s illness and death externally, Love marks death as unstageable on the one hand and offers a commentary on the narratability of suffering and death on the other: The external focalization on the process of dying enables a narrative beyond death necessarily results in a stronger focus on the experience of the caregivers. The subjective experience of death, suffering and dying is thus located beyond representation.