Quest-en-Scène: Die My Love

By Mira Joeckel

As a huge fan of Sissi Spacek and an admirer of Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, I was upset that the cast of Die My Love could not rescue the film from its repetitive, unoriginal, and uninteresting plot. In fact, the plot and the writing were so repetitive that I ended up watching this movie over a period of several viewings, as I grew disinterested and became distracted by everything that wasn’t Die My Love. 

I found the plot of the film promising at first. Die My Love tells the story of Grace (Lawrence), a young mother who moves to—or rather, is moved to—a big house in rural Montana by her husband Jackson (Pattinson). Jackson inherited the house from his uncle, who committed suicide there. Grace develops a close relationship with her mother-in-law, Pam (Spacek), who tells her the story of the uncle’s death and seems to share Grace’s tendencies towards melancholia. Grace is a writer who struggles with the transition to motherhood and domestic life, slowly descending into psychosis and madness. 

So much more could have been done with this premise. I was originally expecting Die My Love to be an alternate version of The Shining, where a writer struggles with isolation in a rural landscape and descends into insanity. I absolutely adore The Shining and was eager to see how these parallels would develop in a film where the protagonist is so different from Jack Torrance. The change to Torrance’s relationship with writing throughout the film is one of the most compelling aspects of Torrance’s descent into madness. Because of this parallel, I was disappointed that Grace’s identity as a writer was extremely underutilized: I can recall only one scene where she is actively writing, and we never see exactly what she has written. 

Continuing to compare Die My Love to The Shining, Shelley Duvall as Wendy (Torrance’s wife) has so much room to express her terror and grief from watching her spouse grow deranged and violent, in an incredible and visceral performance. Although Grace is far less violent than Torrance, Pattinson could have been allowed so much room to express the confusion and fear of the spouse of someone developing a serious mental illness. Instead, he is so constrained in his role that he seemed to only be able to express exasperation. Throughout the film, he began to feel more and more like a cardboard cutout of Pattinson than the iconic actor himself. 

Finally, Grace’s madness was poorly portrayed and repetitive, and there was not any originality in the depiction of her mental troubles. If I had to watch Lawrence crawling on the ground while a baby cried in the distance one more time, I would’ve given up and shut off the movie. Her mental illness, which is hinted at being post-partum psychosis—although it could easily be a number of other conditions, as none are ever mentioned by name—is portrayed largely (with two violent exceptions that I won’t spoil) through a series of clips of her masturbating, stripping her clothes off, antagonizing other young mothers, and walking around Montana with a dazed expression on her face. She rarely speaks aside from words of aggression and the effect of her mental illness on her relationship with her infant son is rarely addressed. Moreover—and this is a bit of a spoiler, so don’t read this sentence if you haven’t watched yet and are planning to—there is no true development in her mental state throughout the movie and she is not allowed to change as a person, even though she spends time in a psychiatric institution and receives help. 

Although the film was an overall disappointment, there were some interesting moments. The most compelling aspect was the relationship between Grace and Pam. Pam has recently lost her husband, sleepwalks with a shotgun in hand, and seems to understand Grace’s mental struggles. I was most engaged with the plot when Grace and Pam shared a tender moment and discussed the difficulties of domestic life, even if it was only nonverbally. Also, Lawrence’s acting was made even more impressive by the fact that her character was limited and rather undeveloped. She did an excellent job at utilizing the weak material she was given to craft a powerful performance. 

Overall, despite its promising premise, this movie failed. Perhaps with a different director or screenwriters, it would have evolved into something more noteworthy and satisfying. In the end, I think this movie is best relegated to those afternoons when you have nothing to do and are desperately bored, when you turn on a random movie to watch while you lounge around with nothing better to do. Sissi Spacek deserved better than this.