Pedro Almodóvar – Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door”: Finale of a symphony of life

Our life runs towards death from birth. Is this the enemy of life that one must never accept, as the writer Elias Canetti says, or a part of life that one must affirm? Types of death are as diverse as life itself. In 1910, in his “Notes of Malte Laurids Brigge,” which were created in the Moloch Paris, Rilke formulated the question of what would become of death in mass society – is it factory-like as in the large hospitals, where it does not happen reaches the individual? Who else has their own death, and what does it mean in relation to the life they have lived so far?

This is also the theme of Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door”, the Spaniard’s first English-language feature-length film, with which he won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival this year. So far, his films have always revolved around Catholicism and sexuality, preferably homosexuality. But now the 75-year-old looks at the end of his life with all his ruthlessness. But since he doesn’t want to deliver a treatise on death, he depicts the death of an unusual woman with poetic power.

So this is a film about death, the death you want, which you shouldn’t call suicide because there are no base motives here, but suicide. And this doesn’t happen because you’re tired of life, but rather to remain the subject of your own life. Just don’t become the object of a clinical machinery that only knows three functions in cancer: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.

Martha has already put all this behind her. She used to work as a reporter in war zones, where death was omnipresent. But it was the violent one that has nothing in common with the good death she is looking for. Her cancer is in its final stages and all treatments have not helped. Now she has gotten a death pill on the Darknet – but she doesn’t want to be alone in her last weeks and days. Her friends don’t want to take on this task and they all turn Martha down.

By chance, Ingrid, Martha’s former friend, who lives as a writer in New York, hears about her incurable illness. She had just published a book about death – written against it, which needed to be fought. Of course, it was also her own fear that drove her. Ingrid now visits Martha, first in the hospital, then in her apartment. Suddenly there is a great closeness between them again, so that Martha finally asks her to be in the next room when she goes on her last journey. That would make it easier for her to say goodbye to the world. An imposition for the writer, who is torn between respecting her friend’s decision to commit suicide and being worried about the role she should play in it.

It’s about remaining the subject of your own life – just not becoming the object of a clinical machinery.

»The Room Next Door« becomes a furious chamber play by two extraordinary actresses: Tilda Swinton as Martha and Julianne Moore as Ingrid. Martha rents a house in New England for the two of them. In this idyll she wants to leave life when the day comes. But Ingrid can’t handle it; Always having to expect that she would suddenly be found dead was beyond her strength. Martha reassures her that on the day she did it, she would close her room door, which is usually always open. Then she could leave the rest to others.

But it’s not that simple: a life on demand, how do you deal with it? Sometimes Martha feels very bad, then Ingrid feels how close she is to death – emaciated, weak and with all the ugly side effects of a growing death within her. “You’re my guest, not my nurse,” Martha tells her succinctly, saying she’ll be fine. But they both know that time is deadline.

On some days, however, Martha is bursting with energy again, it’s as if everything could still be okay. They talk for a long time, remember, laugh, listen to music and watch films. But these phases are getting shorter. Ingrid senses that what they are here to do is about to happen. But she doesn’t know when it will happen; Martha doesn’t want to tell her that – and under no circumstances should she be able to be prosecuted later for illegally assisting suicide.

It’s amazing where this shocking and not at all deathly, but entirely life-affirming film gets its intensity, when we know very soon how it will end. And there are no miracles – or there are, very small magical moments in which there is harmony with life in its inexhaustible dimensions.

No, Martha probably wasn’t a good mother. Even now, shortly before she leaves the world, her daughter keeps a cool distance from her. A pain that Martha bears heavily. She has probably done a lot of wrong things in her life. But does that invalidate something of who she was and still is in the face of death? No, her courage seems unbroken. Also her curiosity about other people, about the world around her – and she will soon leave all of that behind? No matter how you turn it, it remains cruel in a way that is hard to bear.

But at least death shouldn’t attack them as something foreign, but rather something they have chosen themselves. Is this hubris, a symbol of an exaggerated individualism that even wants to dictate to death, this great force of fate? Hardly, it’s just the strong will to have her own death, one that fits her life. When does she want to leave? When the sun shines or when it rains? This question turns out to be unanswerable.

This film is memorable, not just because of its subject matter, but because of its special images. Cameraman Eduard Grau succeeds in creating an atmosphere of farewell to the world and intense moments of happiness using economical – yet highly artificial – shots. What carefully chosen color arrangements, as if he wanted to paint pictures! The yellow in Martha’s dress or the green of the lounge chairs on the front porch speak to us. It is like a great symphony of life that is heading towards its finale, a climax that is also the end point.

An irritating film, but in no way has any superficial intentions. At the end, Ingrid is caught in the same conflict regarding her friend’s suicide as at the beginning. There are contradictions in our existence that are too great to ever stop troubling us. But it is exhilarating to see how a great film is created from small, intimate observations, the intensity of which transcends death.

»The Room Next Door«, Spain 2024. Directed and written by Pedro Almodóvar. With: Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. 107 min. Release date: October 24th.