Review: Death Does Not Exist stares down the impossibility of being alive

There isn't much imagery that's as immediately legible as a sheep being hunted by wolves. You see that, and you get it: the innocent and defenseless vs. the violent and powerful, the loner vs. the pack, prey and predator. It's imminently understandable symbolism, easy to tip into being heavy-handed, obvious, boring even. When it popped up in Death Does Not Exist, I was like yeah, okay, sure. Hélène feels like she's being hunted down by these people, I get it, sure. But as we return to the imagery time and again, as we delve deeper into Hélène's psyche, as the film becomes more textured and difficult to wrestle with, I found myself surprised as the symbol became harder to parse, something grittier to chew on. It feels like the perfect encapsulation of the film as a whole, with all its wrinkles and eccentricities.

Death Does Not Exist, which recently premiered at Cannes and will be showing at Annecy as part of the Official Selection, starts from a simple place. We meet Hélène and her friends as they're about to storm a lavish mansion. They discuss how the rich people who live there own much of the surrounding area and keep gobbling up more. They need to be stopped by whatever means necessary. It's an inflection point, nerves need to be steeled, there's no going back from this. Everyone seems solid, except maybe Hélène, though she assures her comrades that she's in. No problem.

Tension is high as they approach, and the shootout results in mass casualties on both sides. Only Hélène is left standing from her group. She hung back, watched from a distance, ran after the golden blood flowed and gushed and popped. She didn't have the nerve, the stomach, the something to carry out the plan, to do part, to risk her skin.

From that point, the film becomes something a bit harder to name, a sort of Dantean journey through the purgatory of this encounter's aftermath. Hélène is joined by one of her fallen friends, Manon, who says she'll lead her through the forest, show her some things, and then leave her to decide what to do: to retreat to her home, to safety, to peace (whatever that means); or to join her comrades.

What exactly this means is not immediately clear, and even after finishing the movie, I found my head swimming and spinning trying to grasp what I just watched. This isn't always an easy movie to follow, even if it's an easy movie to watch, and even an easy movie to like. This sort of thing is a balancing act, delicate. When something is this strange and mysterious, full of symbolism and dense with meaning, it's easy for it to tip into being frustrating or annoying to watch. For me, that wasn't the case here. I felt myself being pulled through by the gorgeous imagery and idea-rich script, fluidly shifted from moment to moment, scene to scene, not always sure how I got there or where I was going, but happy nonetheless. 

(This is a movie that, I imagine, will become richer upon rewatch, and since it's only 72 minutes long, it isn't much of a time commitment. Maybe I'll watch it again soon.)

One of the reasons Death Does Not Exist will stick with me, and I imagine will strike a chord with many viewers, is how timely its messaging is. So much of Hélène's inner turmoil stems from the tension of what life is supposed to like, how we're supposed to use our time. Is it enough to live a simple life, to live it well, to surround yourself with loved ones in your little corner of the world, where you can hopefully be safe and sheltered and happy? Or is that irresponsible in a world where so much is owned by so few, where resources and wealth are hoarded while so many suffer? Is it possible to bask in your modest share of the world without buckling beneath the weighty guilt of inaction? Can you just want what you want, or do are we called, as humans, to bend our wants to some greater good, reverberations and resulting shockwaves be damned?

It's heady, heavy stuff, to be sure. And ultimately, I don't know that the film really leans strongly one way or another. (It's also possible that I'm too dense, or was too generally gobsmacked to fully take away a so-called "message" here.) I like that I was left floating in the question rather than grounded in an answer. 

And regardless of how much you might engage with the thematic material here, the style is enough to recommend this. Here, we find various palettes that border on monochrome. First, lots of gold and green and creamy whites. Then we venture into reds, eventually blacks and blues. This movie is so gorgeous, often painterly, sometimes looking like woodblock stamps carved out the environments. There are a few shots of light pulsing and dancing over various objects and faces that are so stunning, liquid beauty that had my eyes practically popping out of my face. It's one of the best-looking movies I've seen this year.

And if the film's climax is a little hard to untangle, I think it suits what came before. Just like that sheep and those wolves. Which one is Hélène. Does she see herself as innocent, hunted? Or is she a wolf, a part of a pack, though a traitor to it? Maybe she's both, maybe we all are, not even at different times but during every moment of our lives, living in these impossible times, each breath a gateway to another moral quandary, bringing us closer to a death that does not exist.