THE SEA INSIDE Directed by Alejandro Amenabar
Certificate PG

Ramon Sampedro (Javier Bardem) wants to die. A quadraplegic for over two decades, he lies in his bed in a ramshackle Galician farmhouse, tended to by his nephew, his sister-in-law, his grumpy brother and his father.
Ramon dreams of flying out of his window towards the sea, his only escape from his bed-bound life. But what he wants most of all is to no longer live, and this surprisingly upbeat, deeply moving and fascinating movie from The Others’ Alejandro Amenabar follows his battle to be allowed to end his life with the help of his friends.
The Sea Inside isn’t a debate on the pros and cons of euthanasia, however. Ramon – a real man who took on the Spanish legal system in his bid for assisted suicide – may only be able to move his head, but his words and thoughts move those around him, especially the lawyer, Julia (Belen Rueda), herself suffering from a degenerative disease, who takes on his case, and local single mother Rosa (Lola Duenas), who first sees Ramon on the TV and then visits him, partly to convince him that life is worth living, and partly wanting him to convince her of that.
Through it all there is an astonishing central performance from Bardem (pictured).
Only in flashback scenes to the accident that caused his injury in 1968 do we see the actor as we usually recognise him – tanned, masculine, young – for the most part, he is stricken in bed, convincingly bound to his immovable body, 50something years old, balding, with a fire in his eyes that shows the man’s grim determination in the face of everyone’s arguments for him to choose life rather than death.
Never mannered, nor flashing those give-me-an-Oscar mannerisms many actors fall back on when playing a disabled person, Bardem gives the performance of his career in a wonderfully poignant film.