THE STORY – In a remote, forgotten rural area, a mother struggles to maintain her sanity as she battles with psychosis.
THE CAST – Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, LaKeith Stanfield, Sissy Spacek & Nick Nolte
THE TEAM – Lynne Ramsay (Director/Writer), Enda Walsh & Alice Birch (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 118 Minutes
“God help the beast in me.”
Lynne Ramsay, one of the great filmmaking artists of our time, sadly does not work as frequently as she should. Since 1999, with the premiere of her first feature film, “Ratcatcher,” the Scottish director has given us only four feature films. Each one more challenging in its own right but also a strong work of art that has cemented her reputation as one of the most beloved filmmakers amongst cinephiles. Maybe if Ramsay were able to give us a new film more frequently, it would be less of an event, but with each passing work, she loudly demands through the psychologically challenging images she puts up on the screen and the themes of her work why she deserves to tell whatever story she wants with whatever budget or star she wants. Now, with her fifth film “Die, My Love,” (based on Ariana Harwicz’s novel of the same name) and her first since 2018’s “You Were Never Really Here,” she has assembled two mega Hollywood stars for her latest, which tackles a subject not often explored in cinema or life but is far more common than people want to admit: postnatal depression.
Grace (a fearless Jennifer Lawrence), a writer, and Jackson (Robert Pattinson), a musician, move into Jackson’s deceased uncle Harry’s old house, where he grew up during his childhood after the birth of their new son (who remains nameless for the majority of the film). The house is large, with plenty of room for them. The couple is passionately in love, frequently partaking in sex, and all seems well at first. However, Grace is gradually experiencing melancholy as she stays in the empty house all day, cleaning, struggling to write, and taking care of the baby while her partner leaves for work for the majority of the day. Despite his sincere attempts to reach his slipping partner, Jackson is pathetically helpless to stop Grace from acting on her primal and erratic urges, whether they involve lashing out at him, wandering off, acting out in front of others, or committing physical harm to herself. Will their relationship survive? Is there anything that can help Grace through a difficult first year of being a mother (“Everyone goes a little loopy the first year,” she’s told)?
Ramsay captures Grace’s disintegration not with exposition but through sensation: unnerving sound design, jarring edits, and a disorienting, sometimes bizarre soundtrack that mimics Grace’s fractured mind. Even the record player in the house, which the two frequently love to play, becomes a tool of torment, its persistent skips and static rattling in her head and the audience’s as well. A dog gifted by Jackson in a failed attempt to lift her spirits only adds to her sensory overload with its incessant barking. The domestic space where this person is meant to spend the rest of her life with the man and baby she supposedly loves becomes an emotional prison. Grace wanders its halls, bored and with nowhere to put her emotions since she can’t confide in Jackson without becoming aggressive and not with her son because, well, he’s still an infant. Jackson may still have his parents around (Nick Nolte and an exceptional Sissy Spacek), but Grace has literally no one. Her isolation is total, and whatever faint glimmer of hope there is to save her from this depression seems small by comparison.
Lawrence is, to put it simply, extraordinary. Although she won an Oscar for playing what was deemed a “crazy” character in “Silver Linings Playbook,” she takes that up a notch and then some, showcasing her years of experience since then, what working with a director of the caliber of Ramsay can get out of a performer and turning in her best performance since “mother!.” She is shattering and volatile, yet never less than human. Grace can be furious and frightening, yes, but she’s also deeply troubled and confused, and Lawrence never lets the audience forget that humanity is still there. This is the kind of performance audiences rarely get to see as postpartum depression is rarely showcased in film, and Lawrence, a mother herself, lays bear her body and soul, literally and figuratively, sometimes walking on all fours to bring those emotions to light. Pattinson, meanwhile, plays a man watching the person he loves disappear before his eyes, powerless to do anything to stop it. His Jackson is not weak in the sense of his devotion towards her but impotent in the face of Grace’s collapse. Despite the emotional and physical toll, his commitment to her is both noble and tragic, leading the film to be quite moving and showcasing how far one’s partner will go for the person they love despite all evidence saying otherwise.
The lines between fantasy and reality blur as Grace’s mental state deteriorates, and there are very few filmmakers working today who capture this better than Ramsay. A flirtation with a local neighbor (played by LaKeith Stanfield) may or may not be real, adding another layer of instability, while Grace seeks sexual pleasure from Jackson. Ramsay isn’t interested in clarifying what’s in Grace’s head and what’s external; she lets us live inside the chaos for the nearly two-hour runtime. And it is chaos. At times, “Die, My Love” feels like a waking nightmare. The house becomes a place of destruction and catharsis as Grace tears it apart, not out of hatred but because it’s the only thing she can control, the only place where her pain can be physically expressed.
Attitudes shift, sex changes, and the outside world feels increasingly surreal. Ramsay’s direction ensures we’re never grounded for long, just as Grace can’t find her footing. Even moments of tenderness feel dangerous and fleeting, for we never know what Grace will do next. And yet, amidst all this devastation, “Die, My Love” is ultimately a love story, albeit a messed up, painful one. Jackson may not be enough to save Grace, but he refuses to leave her, and that commitment, even as their relationship metaphorically goes up in flames, is the heartbreaking grace note that makes the experience worth it. Lynne Ramsay has made yet another masterwork, as visceral, poetic, and deeply disturbing as anything she’s given us before. “Die, My Love” isn’t just a film about postnatal depression; it’s a brutal symphony of love and madness, with two actors at the top of their game under a filmmaker so firmly in control of this narrative and its message.
