The buzz at this year’s Academy Awards is a foreign language film called “Amour”. It is a French language film directed by Michael Haneke and winner of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Ore Award. It is one of the few foreign films to have been nominated for Best Picture by the Academy. If it were to win, it would be the only film since 1955’s “Marty” to win the top prize at both Cannes and the Oscars.
The premise of “Amour” is “murder can be loving”. The film is about a married couple, Anne and George, two retired music teachers in their eighties. Anne under goes a surgery for a blocked artery that goes terrible wrong and leaves her confined to a wheelchair. The film sensitively depicts the depth and security of a strong marital bond, as the devoted husband is shown feeding, bathing, exercising and reading stories in the daily grind which seems to last months if not years. But that relationship ends with a shocking act that clearly advocates euthanasia.
What many people are not aware of is that “Amour” is eerily similar to a Nazi propaganda film called “Ich klage an” (in English “I Accuse”). The film was commissioned by Goebbels in 1941 to gain support for the Reich’s T4 euthanasia program. The film was directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner. The story line for “Ich klage an” depicts a woman with multiple sclerosis who asks her husband, a doctor, to relieve her suffering permanently. He agrees to give her a lethal injection of morphine while his friend (who is also a doctor) plays tranquil music on the piano.
The husband is put on trial, where arguments are put forth that prolonging life is sometimes contrary to nature, and that death is a right as well as a duty. It culminates in the husband’s declaration that he is accusing them of cruelty for trying to prevent such a death.
- Both films are about a husband and wife who have a seemingly perfect love and marriage.
- In the Nazi film, the wife’s name is Hanna. In Amour, the wife’s name is Anne.
- In the Nazi film, the wife is a piano player. In Amour, the wife is a music teacher.
- In both films, the wife suffers a devastating illness and begs for death to a demurring husband.
- In both films, the husband eventually gives in and kills his wife.
- In both films, the first judgment of the society is that the act is murder. In both films, the audience is led around to the conclusion that NOT to have killed the wife would have been a greater crime.
As they say, there is nothing new under the sun. What is old is new again. The cultural left is on the bandwagon creating propaganda that to convince us that killing expensive people is an act of love and kindness. If we are to live in a society where it is perfectly acceptable for parents to kill their children in the womb for convenience, then obviously, we will accept children killing their parents for convenience.
Welcome to the Brave New World.
