The Sea Inside

The Oscars are tonight and so I felt inspired to let you in on the first time I laid eyes on Javier Bardem, who is very likely to win his first statuette this evening for Best Supporting in No Country for Old Men. He was nominated once before way back in 2000 for another foreign film, Before Night Falls. But now he's full fledged American movie star material at the ripe old age of 39, even though he's been working since he was 2. Go figure. Anyhoo, I fell in love with the guy when I saw him in The Sea Inside.

This is the true story of Ramon Sampedro, who after a terrible diving accident spent some thirty years of his life as a quadriplegic trying to legally attain the right to an assisted suicide. This may sound like dreary subject matter but Bardem is brilliant and director Alejandro Amenabar (The Others) managed to take Sampedro's Letters from Hell and morph it into a screenplay with unbelievable depth and nuance. Rather than being about death or a longing for it, it is instead a story about life and it's quality, and about love and transcendence over circumstance. Every perspective is respectfully explored and if the film should bring you to tears, it will also open your heart.

And so it won Best Foreign Film back in 2005 and began my unrequited adoration of its star. Bardem was 35 when he played Sampedro at 55 and endured hours of makeup and hours in bed immobile. He learned a dialect of Spanish that was unfamiliar to him and how to write with a pencil in his mouth. He is utterly believable in this role and although the film has many fine actors in supporting parts - he is what made it memorable. Long before he played a sociopath with a Buster Brown haircut in a distinctly American film, Bardem had genius. Check out the website here.