THE DEEP SAD SEA

REVIEWED - THE SEA INSIDE/MAR ADENTRO: Choosing to die is the theme of Alejandro Amenábar's moving, life-affirming new drama, writes Michael Dwyer

A quadriplegic man's claim for the right to an assisted suicide is the theme of Alejandro Amenábar's masterly and profoundly moving Spanish drama. The Sea Inside is based on the experiences of Ramón Sampedro, a ship's mechanic who was paralysed from the neck down after a diving accident when he was 26. Sampedro spent most of three decades confined to a bed as he fought his legal case "to die with dignity".

A flashback sequence illustrates the accident that changed his life to the point where he decided that death was the only way of dealing with its consequences. Sampedro resents being so entirely dependent on other people, and this makes him learn "to cry with a smile".

The film is set almost entirely over the last months of Ramón's life at his brother's home in Galicia in northern Spain. He lies in bed, surrounded by his caring family, who would prefer if his death wish were denied.

The difficult moral dilemma at the core of the drama is vividly expressed in a single, haunting line of dialogue, when Ramón's father laments the fact that it's hard enough to know your son is dying, but even worse to know that that's what he wants.

However, Ramón, who is in full possession of his alert mental faculties, insists he has made the most rational decision. The film thoughtfully explores the arguments for and against euthanasia, and offers them for the consideration of the audience.

The treatment is fundamentally serious, although not without humour, as when a paraplegic priest visits Ramón. As the Jesuit's wheelchair will not fit on the stairway to Ramón's room, their debate about euthanasia is conducted as a shouting match, with a young cleric acting as emissary and referee between them.

An alternative perspective is offered when Julia (played by Belén Rueda), the lawyer who supports Ramón's case, contracts a degenerative disease, loses her mobility and finds she has to make a difficult decision for herself.

The Sea Inside is marked by a maturity and insight that belies the age of Amenábar, the multi-talented 32-year-old director, producer, co-writer, composer and editor. Working on an issues-driven drama and on a factually based subject for the first time, he weds his evidently keen intelligence and imaginative sense of visual style to build upon the considerable achievements of his three earlier features (Tesis, Open Your Eyes and The Others).

In a small, consummate cast, Javier Bardem, the gifted star of Jamón, Jamón, Live Flesh and Before Night Falls, plays Ramón Sampedro in a wonderfully expressive and perfectly judged performance that is precisely in tone with the consistently unsentimental approach of this enthralling film.

Adeptly aged by the make-up department to play a man who, at 55, is 20 years older than he himself is, Bardem had to rely on just his eyes and voice to communicate all the complex emotions his character feels in a film that, despite its theme, is ultimately, powerfully life-affirming.