DVD Review: The Sea Inside (2004)

WHOSE LIFE IS IT ANYWAY?

It isn't hard to fathom why Sanjay Bhansali took so readily to Alejandro Amenabar's Spanish film, The Sea Inside (Mar Adentro). Both the subject and the treatment run along a thin line between classical melodrama and tear-jerking excess. While Amenabar's film stays firmly on the former side, Bhansali's Guzaarish attempted the latter and couldn't quite deliver even as a self-pitying elegy of a quadriplegic. Based on the true life story of Ramon Semprado who got paralysed in a swimming accident and spent many of the next 30 years trying to convince the Spanish government to let him end his life on humanitarian grounds,  The Sea Inside is a dazzling piece of work which reaffirms human resilience while still making a compelling case for euthanasia. 

Casting Javier Bardem as Ramon is a perverse masterstroke. A strapping handsome young man (and that's exactly how he looks in the flashback portions where his Greek-God face and body are displayed for maximum effect), is reduced to a vegetable. Ramon, 30 years after the accident, is a plump, bald, wrinkled man whose eyes still can't help sparkle and his smile easily melts hearts. Chained to his bed, Ramon looks out of the window from his first floor bedroom and lets his imagination take him wherever he feels like. He also writes with his mouth, speaks on the phone with his friends, has a loving family attending to him and doesn't betray his sense of worthlessness quite as readily as Hrithik Roshan's Ethan does in Guzaarish. Nor does Bardem ham for even a moment. 

His sister-in-law (Mabel Rivera), who has taken care of him throughout his confinement is a wonderfully unsentimental woman. His old father, his brother and his nephew all care for him in their own ways and each has a different take on his decision. Ramon demands that he wants a lawyer who's also suffering from a debilitating illness and in comes Julia (Belen Rueda), who has a degenerative disorder that causes a series of strokes that are likely to progressively worsen her condition. Their relationship is magical and true because its shaped by its own unattainability.

A local factory worker and single mother Rosa (Lola Duenas) watches Ramon's impassioned plea on television (and he makes a very good case for it, unlike in Guzaarish) and starts visiting him, trying to talk him out of his scheme, more from her own neediness than genuine affection for the man. His other dear friend is a right-to-die activist, Gene (Clara Segura) and amongst the select few who have agreed to help him carry out his wish -- since being in his condition makes it impossible for him to even plot his own death without external support! 

Bardem's Ramon has a serenity about him that can only be achieved by someone who's literally been nailed to a bed for half a lifetime and has perhaps spent his time trying to resolve existential issues in his head. He loses his cool and gets dejected just once, and not even when a sanctimonious priest (also a quadriplegic) decides to visit him and tries to show him the Christian path of endurance and suffering. Ramon not only out-wits him with his perfectly rational arguments, he also summarily throws him out of the house in the film's funniest scene. 

There's a liberal sprinkling of humour and good cheer here. Even those around him rarely betray their emotions and much of the atmosphere actually creates a conflict about whether Ramon's life is really that insufferable. Except, Bardem and Amenabar have clearly cut out their task -- of not just conveying the protagonist's condition honestly and effectively, but also of ensuring that his plea is justified and argued as dispassionately as possible.

Lyrical, poignant and clear-sighted, The Sea Inside, is a masterful creation that deserved a far richer tribute than Guzaarish. And of course, it definitely needed to be acknowledged as source material -- something Hindi filmmakers think absolutely nothing of.