Saturday, February 9, 2013

Veronika Decides To Die


Everyone has dreams but only a few realizes them.” - Dr. Blake

The movie revolves around the life of Veronika Deklava and how her view of life changed when she attempted to commit suicide. When the sense of repetitiveness in her lifestyle made her feel dissatisfied and that her everyday routine seemed to kill her willingness to live, she decided to take the matters into her own hands by taking in several pieces of pills one by one. However, her attempt to end her life wasn't successful as she wanted it to be. She woke up in Vilette, a mental hospital in New York where she found out that she damaged her heart and that she only had weeks to live.  With permission from her parents, she was advised to stay in the facility until that day came. Backed up with her desperation and persistence to put a period into her existence, she tried once again by sneaking into a room where a cabinet filled with bottles of pills were. She was caught though before she even swallowed the pills. 

During her stay in the hospital, she met Edward, the reason why she wanted to make the most of her remaining days before she dies. Little did she know, Dr. Blake, who was trying to change her view of her own life had a secret that he kept from Veronika. Dr. Blake did plan to unravel this secret to her but Veronika already had a plan of her own. She and Edward ran away from the place they thought were keeping them from living the kind of life they preferred to live, the kind of life that was preventing them from making the most of every moment they got. They spent every second of the time together and based on the passed scenes of the movie, I've never seen them that much happy. Then Veronika’s time to bid goodbye was about to come. They were sitting on the bench of a platform near the beach on a cold breezy evening. Isn't it awful to find a person that makes you happy and know exactly what day you will lose that person? And the most heart-breaking part is you are only hours away from having to let go. Anyway, I want to tell you what happened at the end of the movie and the secret that Dr. Blake wanted to tell Veronika but some of you might not have watched the movie yet and so I will leave the story from where I finished.

The message that I got from this movie was what Dr. Blake said about “Awareness of Life”. Veronika found no reason to live and that the habit of history repeating itself managed to drain her energy to live another day. She looked at everything that she had and the people that surrounded her insignificant. She never found contentment and happiness despite having everything that a lot of women long to have. She had to go through such a painful wait just to be aware of how wonderful life can be if she decides to make it wonderful. The movie taught me that our life doesn't have its own mind. It doesn't create its own situations. The life that we have depends on how we shape it through the decisions we make, the actions we take and the way we view our life as a whole. I looked at Veronika’s life as a perfect life because she had almost everything but the way she viewed it made everything looked so dull and negative. Did she ever have a dream of travelling the world? Or having a family? Put up a business maybe? She seemed to have kept herself inside the box and never really dreamed big. She already had a picture of her future drawn in her mind but that picture she drew was all sad and depressing. She already assumed that her marriage would never work out and everything else would start to fall apart one by one. With that, the movie also taught me to look at bigger possibilities in life and never constraint myself with the boundaries the society dictates. The movie made me believe more that my future is molded by the decisions I make today, the way I look at my life and the actions I take every day.

I don’t really see any creative technique from the movie other than the way the message was conveyed. The message wasn’t given directly in the movie and you would really think what the movie was trying to say. Because of that, people can actually interpret their own understanding of the movie’s message. Furthermore, the message was sent in the right part of the movie and it did cause a lot of excitement for me. The message that the movie  communicated did inspire me a lot and reminded me of how I should live my life. I think most of the people who already watched the movie did get the same message that I got. Veronika’s initial attitude towards life showed what most of us look at our lives. Sometimes, we assume of what our future brings based on the life that we are living now and we tend to lose the confidence that we can change what our mind thinks of our future. 

In a nutshell, I really do like the movie as much as I like the book. The actors they selected fit very well with the characters they played. The actors did a really good job in making the characters of the book alive and they did send every emotion they needed to depict in every situation successfully. Some people might find this movie boring but for those who are into inspirational movies then they will surely like the way the book of Paulo Coelho was interpreted in a movie. Despite some changes made like the setting of the story and the occupation of Veronika, it didn't change the essence of the book. For me, the most important thing in turning this kind of book into a movie is retaining the message that the book is trying to relay. I believe that the movie was made in order to simply inspire us and remind us to live life to the fullest. 

Photo was taken from: msoundtracks.blogspot.com

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