A new mother deals with post-partum depression while left alone in a secluded farmhouse, turning to animalistic frustration in Lynne Ramsay’s fascinating Die My Love.
CW: Dog death and notes of child endangerment.
Moving into a dilapidated farmhouse left to rot by his dead uncle, the newly married couple of Jackson and Grace find Grace quickly pregnant. She’s all too often left alone with the child, Robert Pattions’s Jackson has a job that away for long periods of time. In the throes of post-partum depression and with no true outlet, she begins to crack, becoming more raw and animal.
Die My Love is a compelling, if a little aimless, tale of the feelings of post-partum depression, combined with and heightening personal issues and clashes; of a marriage and personalities with cracks. It’s raw and emotional, and endlessly compelling. Across her filmography, Lynne Ramsey excels in dealing with people not quite connecting with the world around them, in the home, such as We Need to Talk About Kevin, or outwardly in You Were Never Really Here. For Die My Love, adapted from the Arana Harwicz book by Ramsay, Alice Birch & Enda Walsh, she gives us a top-of-her-game Jennifer Lawrence as a new mother struggling with a new life: both in a new home with a new husband and the literal life she’s left to raise. Disconnected and disconcerted with others, Die My Love explores her feelings in an expressive but perhaps a tad loose way. Some may expect or want a stronger narrative through line. But as a feelings-based character piece, Die My Darling strikes an open nerve and emotional truth.
Ramsey brings truth to the relationship and the people within. Jennifer Lawrence’s Grace may have always been distant and unhappy; brought to the surface with a new child and a husband who doesn’t know how to deal with any issue. Someone who has always been more animal in emotions, loose and free, is now dealing with a babbling potato that needs his parents. Pattinson is far and distant, in personality and job, but it’s not a melodramatic force of a terrible man; he loves her and is a doting father. He just doesn’t really notice or know what to do as she breaks down. He doesn’t have the emotional maturity to really approach her, shutting down in his own way. He’s a nice guy, just clueless. His mother, down the road, played by a soulful Sissy Spacek, seems to have had the same emotions and depression in her past as Grace has now, a generational cycle touched upon, but she is dealing with her own issues in recent widowhood (by Nick Nolte, making the most out of his few scenes).
Die My Love has a stark and real look to match Grace’s feelings of depression. Ramsey shoots the film, and the look Seamus McGarvey provided in cinematography sets a fitting, striking, and uncomfortable atmosphere. A 4:3 aspect ratio box in the already claustrophobic interior location. She will often lock the camera to a long series of rooms, with minimal movement within; windows peeking into the wide and empty exteriors. Most of the film has a pallor, a ghastly green overlay. It’s the sickly coloring of looking at photographs in family albums of the 50s and 60s in our grandmothers’ homes. It’s a fantastic visual representation of feeling like times past of women in the home and masked unhappiness (such as the mentioned Spacek and generational postpartum and uncaring men) of faded feelings, trapped in time. It’s a modern set film, but the reflection of the past into the present resonates.
Jennifer Lawrence is at a career best. Understated, but raw and emotional, she has a writhing strength to her Grace as she tries to codify her mental state. I loved the way she moves within the film. Very animalistic, even on the good days; it’s how the character is, twists and writhes. She’s unmoored in life, brutal in a fantastically misunderstood way. Grace shows she might always have been unhappy and dissatisfied, has always been in need of help, but she hasn’t received it. With the new baby bringing more to the surface, it’s too much to handle. Someone who has always had trouble connecting with anyone, always out of place. With this, Lawrence and Pattinson have incredible chemistry. Robert Pattinson is great as the husband, failing in his own way, but this is Lawrence’s show.
However, in all that fantastic character and look, there’s something that doesn’t quite land. I see what Ramsey is working at, but the details are a little too enigmatic. I’m not one who wants things spelled out. It’s clear how much Grace is breaking down. But some details, some need for information, are just left in the distance, leading to what seems like a repetition of scenes. Then again, that’s what life is in this situation, the same thing again and again. That’s life, but in a film it’s odd. I wonder if the book might give more insight. It’s a film not about the reasons and results, and cures of postpartum, but the feelings over a concrete grounding.
Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love brings a fascination and fantastic performance by Jennifer Lawrence as an unmoored mother in the throes of postpartum depression and other issues. Beautiful in a stark, purposeful ugliness, it’s a hell of a film that might not connect with everyone, but for those it does, it’ll hit hard.
FINAL SPOILER NOTE: Putting this down here if you’re concerned about the baby and want to know.
The baby is fine. As a father of a 4-year-old, I spent the whole film overly concerned for the couple’s son. It can be very distracting if trying to focus on the couple at the center, if thinking the kid is seconds away from getting hurt. It’s not that type of movie.