The Sea Inside (2004)
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The Sea Inside Movie Review
The Sea Inside is a 2004 Spanish drama film directed by Alejandro Amenabar and starring Javier Bardem. It’s a solid, but very clichéd movie.
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“When you can’t escape,
and you constantly rely on everyone else,
you learn to cry by smiling, you know?“
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It follows a man who, after a diving accident, becomes paralyzed for live. He pleads for assisted suicide and euthanasia, but nobody will let him do that. It was based on a real story and this subject matter is obviously very important. It’s one of those endless question points that nobody can really get a grip on, one way or the other.
But the film itself almost never really deals with this issue in any more meaningful and/or sophisticated manner. The director never gives his own stance, and he plays it way too safe. I know that Alejandro Amenabar is a capable, bold director, but here he just made a mainstream Oscar-bait film and it obviously worked wonders for him as it brought him an Oscar, expectedly and undeservedly so.
That’s not to say that it doesn’t have its moments because it surely does in the form of those wonderful cinematic touches such as dream sequences, especially the flights. That was very poetic and beautiful, and I wished more of the film was as surreal as that part, and not as straightforward.
The acting is strong across the board with Javier Bardem delivering probably his career-best performance. The character himself is standard and not all that endearing in my opinion, but his performance is excellent and he should have been nominated for it. The make-up was nominated, though, and deservedly so as he looks convincingly older and paraplegic.
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The Sea Inside is also very well filmed, especially in those aforementioned dream sequences. That was so enchanting. The movie is also competently directed, edited and paced. Everything here is very solid, but nothing is great. There are some moments that hint at greatness in terms of dialogue, but for the most part the film hinges on cheesy emotional sequences that really were more annoying than moving. It was just all so standard and clichéd that it’s obvious how the Academy fell in love with it.
The Sea Inside is competently made and very well acted by Javier Bardem in what is one of his greatest performances. The film is at its best in those dream flight sequences which are cinematic and very memorable, but otherwise it relied on typically cheesy emotional scenes instead of genuinely exploring the very complex issue of euthanasia.
