‘Die My Love’ Review: A Fragmented Look at a Woman at the End of Her Rope
Jennifer Lawrence gives the best performance of her career in Lynne Ramsay’s ‘Die My Love’. However, the fragmented structure of the movie may prove alienating for audiences, especially as it purposefully antagonizes at almost every turn.
Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love may not be as strong as her masterpiece, Morvern Callar, but it almost doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because her vision is so singularly distinct that it alone feels like a fresh new look at a subject that has been treated time and again on screen. Most recently, Mary Bronstein illustrated the day-to-day anxieties (read: dread) of motherhood with her incredible If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, while Ramsay focuses more specifically on the subject of postpartum depression, after its protagonist, Grace (Jennifer Lawrence), gives birth to an unnamed child with her husband, Jackson (Robert Pattinson).
Ramsay does not tell this story in the conventional sense of the term. Instead, she plunges us into Grace’s mind as she attempts to make sense of a dreary world that looks to be leaving her behind and cares no less about her ongoing struggles in caring for a child with a partner who only thinks about himself at every turn. Is the life she’s currently living worth the mental and physical torture of a relationship that brings her no happiness, almost as if she’s shackled to Jackson out of force, and not out of love, especially with how his parents (played by Nick Nolte and Sissy Spacek) interact with one another? This question is the central heart of the Scottish filmmaker’s adaptation of Ariana Harwicz’s book of the same name, who will frequently show fragments of a scene rather than the whole picture and force the audience to make associations with what they’re seeing, because the dialogue is, in many cases, completely imperceptible.
As was Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, this is not a movie you hear, but feel. Dialogues are purposefully muffled in many sections, as the overbearing score from Ramsay, George Vijestica, Raife Burchell, and Ben Frost assaults our senses in aurally unpleasant ways (and purposefully so). At times, Ramsay will also create distressing, anxiety-inducing tension with the environing sounds of a given space – the vinyl’s music, the constant barking of Jackson’s dog, juxtaposed with the baby’s cries as characters imperceptibly talk over one another. There isn’t a moment of respite in the fragments we see for Grace to take a breather and sit with herself for just a millisecond. Her life is chaotic, just as the movie won’t imbue an ounce of pleasant emotions in the viewer. It’s designed to make you feel bad, perhaps torture you visually and aurally, without shame.
In fact, the only “moments” (if we can call them that) are when she looks at Karl (LaKeith Stanfield), a neighbor who lives a more idealized, peaceful life than hers. He consistently drives by Grace’s house with her motorcycle until she begins to find out who he is and what kind of life he has with his family. There’s a slight romantic fling, but it doesn’t get deepened the way it should, or it’s never clear if their interactions are genuine or just a figment of Grace’s imagination. In fact, the entire movie can be interpreted as pure fiction, in the sense that the protagonist may be Ramsay’s most unreliable narrator yet, particularly as her mind begins to delve into darker territories, where even modern medicine cannot address the issues she has deep within her.
This is visualized through a stark use of magical realism that consistently blurs the line between Grace’s harsh reality and a mind that only wants to be at peace. As a result, Die My Love is not an easy film to assimilate, and it certainly put off many viewers who might have been attracted by the prospect of seeing both Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson on screen together, but without knowing that the movie breaks all conventional narrative modes. Approaching the movie with the knowledge that films have “three acts” sets you up to fail, because this film has no “act” but the fragmented mind of Grace’s torment, which boxes you in with its claustrophobic 1.33:1 cinematography (courtesy of the great Seamus McGarvey, his best work since Drew Goddard’s Bad Times at the El Royale) and never gives you a single ounce of freedom within the square confines of its aspect ratio.
Every scene is deliberately shot from Grace's perspective. We’re always at her level, even when the camera shows any other character in her vicinity. It’s through her eyes we perceive how she sees everyone else, which, once again, creates a disquieting sense of tension that one can’t shake off. One would’ve hoped Ramsay polished her narrative slightly to make it feel less scattershot, especially as we begin to lose track of what matters most in this abrasive and antagonistic portrait of postpartum depression, but, again, it doesn’t really matter when Lawrence gives a career-best turn, one worthy of an Oscar more than her performance in the disastrous Silver Linings Playbook.
There’s a real sense of intimacy and texture in Lawrence’s portrayal of Grace that, no matter how haphazardly structured the narrative may get, we always recenter ourselves through her rage – a primal cry for help that sadly never dampens itself and only gets worse as Jackson’s egocentric behavior amplifies and everyone around her expresses facile comments that only make Grace feel worse. Pattinson is, of course, a solid counterpoint to Grace, but it’s Lawrence who steals the show. Her performance is nothing short of exceptional and is the reason why Die My Love will stand the test of time in Ramsay’s corpus.
Again, it may not be her most polished effort, especially when it ends on a surreal note that raises more questions than answers. Still, it also feels uniquely refreshing in a moviegoing era that has lost its will to challenge its audience. That’s why any adventurous cinephile will find something to chew on in a film that meets far more than its (conventional) trailers will lead you to believe. The layperson who is looking to have their hands held the entire two-hour runtime may not like it (and the film will likely not have an ounce of perennity amongst mainstream audiences). Yet, if you surrender yourself to Ramsay’s mad, maximalist portrait of a woman on literal and figurative fire, maybe you’ll resonate with something and relate to Grace’s struggles. That alone makes Die My Love worthwhile, as confrontational as it may be (which is the highest possible compliment one can give it).