“Die my Love” bored me to death
Walking into the theater, I was genuinely excited. I am a huge fan of both Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, and because Pattinson was attached, I expected something indie, strange, maybe even original— perhaps similar to “The Lighthouse” or “Good Time.” What I didn’t expect was a film that was simultaneously jarring and mind-numbingly dull.
“Die My Love” follows Grace, played by Jennifer Lawrence, and Jackson, played by Robert Pattinson, as they move from New York City to rural Montana to raise their son, Harry. I would expand on the plot, but there isn’t much of one. For over two hours, we watch Lawrence commit to a string of deliberately “deranged” scenes — screaming into the dark countryside, stalking around the woods with a knife, crawling through grass — all supposedly symbolic of Grace’s psychological unraveling after the birth of their child. At its core, this movie claims to be about postpartum depression. I’ve never had a child before, but this movie convinced me to keep it that way for now, before I end up in the Montana woods on all fours with a kitchen knife.
I understand the symbolism director Lynne Ramsay is reaching for: Grace’s animalistic chaos is meant to reflect the suffocation of domestic roles, the loss of autonomy, the way new motherhood can collide with a woman’s sense of self. The problem is that the film sacrifices everything else — three dimensional characters, some context or background to the events or even a true plotline — in an attempt to achieve this. Walking out of the theater, I found myself Googling what the movie was even about. Even with the incorporation of blatant motifs (namely a black horse symbolic of freedom), I still found the storytelling to be almost lazy in that the film didn’t achieve anything outside of establishing the mental toll of domesticity. With a nearly two-and-a-half hour run time, this movie spends too much time reiterating the same points, each time with more and more abrasive montages of Grace’s mental demise. At the hour-and-a-half mark, the shock value had diminished and I was left thinking, “Really? Again?”
The one positive here is the acting. Lawrence is wildly committed, and it shows. Her performance is layered, unpredictable, and raw in a way that keeps the audience from checking out completely. In my opinion, this is one of her best performances of her career, but unfortunately the script did fall flat in comparison to her incredible abilities. Pattinson’s Jackson, however, suffered even more significantly due to the writing. To me, it seemed that each of Jackson’s emotions were completely different characters. The switch between these versions of him was jarring and sudden. Regardless, Pattinson still pulled off an immensely impressive performance with what he was given. He managed to embody a character who you did not want to feel bad for but was also very human.
“Die My Love” wants to be a primal scream, but it ends up feeling like a prolonged, shapeless tantrum — one that wears down the audience instead of revealing anything new or profound about motherhood or marriage. Even with stellar performances from Pattinson and Lawrence, this film fails to shape itself into a new perspective about domestic life, and instead echoes the same surface level ideals countless other films have told before.
