Die My Love

No film in recent memory has been as made for me as Die My Love. Ramsay’s prior films hold quite an importance for me, especially Morvern Callar, which I went so far as to write about in the 100 Best Performances of the 21st Century article. Additionally, as a Hunger Games kid and mother! apologist, I have long loved Jennifer Lawrence. Finally, a core part of my identity is my insistence that Robert Pattinson is the most versatile and interesting actor of his generation. So for a film to incorporate three of my favorite artists, one could worry that I would approach this film with immense bias and preconceived adoration. Yet, I feel as if I’m speaking entirely honestly when I say Lynne Ramsay has done it again; she has made something truly singular and thought-provoking, a film unshackled from cinematic and social norms that diving headfirst into the depths of human anguish. It may be the worst time at the movies you could possibly have in 2025, but it is unlike anything else out there.

Die My Love tells the story of a young couple, played by Lawrence and Pattinson, who have left the big city for a quiet place to raise their infant son in a country home (and family heirloom) somewhere in the south. All seems well at first, but Lawrence’s Grace seems increasingly unable to grapple with her new life, identity, and changing relationship. Those around her are either too oblivious, too out of their depth, or too quietly pained themselves to be the anchor she needs. With a setup such as this, there is an immediate assumption of postpartum depression. But while it is certainly a factor into her downward spiral, Ramsay has been clear in separating the film from this sole identity, and I think I understand why. The film burrows itself into something much more primal, fundamental, universal, and desperate than a new mother’s overwhelm and sadness; it explores, in the most forward and unflinching of manners, the deep-seated, immovable notion that everything in one’s life is a shallow performance of expectations. And sometimes, that fact might be truly irreconcilable against the innate psychological, biological desire to be truly free and burn it all down.

To get the pure formalities out of the way, this film features some of the most assured, specific direction of Ramsay’s career. Its boldness and viciousness is so upfront as to border on horror, and yet every frame is so calibrated and every outburst of pure rage comes back to the core of the characters. Additionally, this film features stunning cinematography from Seamus McGarvey and some of the most atmospheric, frenzied, dreamy, and overwhelming sound design and editing of the year. The film operates in a perpetual liminal space between reality, memory, dreams, and psychosis, serving as one giant destabilization, and the visual landscape blends claustrophobic close-ups with wide angle panoramas of characters amidst nature, keeping the whole experience unshakably personal but tied to something bigger and more primal. Jennifer Lawrence is, unsurprisingly, an utter tour de force in what could very well be the best performance of her career. Her physicality and intensity is otherworldly, yet unmistakably, paradoxically rooted in a completely grounded humanity at all times. And while I have to quickly shout out the underrated and quietly heartbreaking and always iconic Sissy Spacek, I have to become a broken record and wholly commend Robert Pattinson. Ironically, despite Ramsay’s general reputation and the film that surrounds him, this is one of the most organic performances of his entire career. Jackson’s pain is a subtler one than those of the characters he typically plays. Yes, he is completely out of his depth, consistently aloof, and rather incompetent when it comes to helping his wife, but he is clearly suffering too. His anxiety, grief, and sense of inadequacy as a father, a husband, and a general human being with intelligent thoughts compared to the brilliance he sees in his wife is always palpable, though never explicitly stated. We regrettably loathe his inability to navigate hardship, but we empathize with that pervasive doubt that, at our worst, I think we all relate to. As such, Pattinson is Lawrence’s subtler foil, restraining his true feelings in the face of her firestorm and only ever erupting in a misdirected malice that obscures his true feelings. It takes two to tango, and Lawrence and Pattinson are a perfectly complementary duo dancing to their mutually assured destruction. 

And this is where we get to the crux of the entire film, not one of “mere” postpartum depression or marital strife or unspoken grief and trauma, but one of utter psychological apocalypse. Other filmmakers have sought to intellectualize mental illness, speaking about it in clinical, detached terms as a means of avoiding sentimentality while pursuing catharsis, or to play it up for some overt emotional response from the viewer, perhaps also chasing catharsis as a more exploitative, weepy result. This is all fine enough, but Ramsay seems bored by these notions, and I would say the film is better for it. Ramsay is not seeking to rationalize something as irrational as mental illness, or to heal something as unending as mental illness. Rather, she seeks to bring it to the forefront like we’ve never seen before, stripped of all politeness and inspiration, and exploding in our face with a feral terror. Have you ever wondered what a film would be like if it sought to literalize every negative emotion and thought one has ever had into a visualization of pure anguish? Well, wonder no longer. Ramsay’s vision is not a clean one or a healing one; it lays bare an utter existential horror with no resolution. When faced with the realization that your entire life is a façade meant to appease society and that you have trapped yourself in the center of a labyrinth of suppressed pain, desire, trauma, and genuine freedom, there may be no choice but to light it all ablaze, declaring war on your mind, life, and everything you were told you wanted. The lack of optimism is emotionally abysmal to behold. Yet, amongst the depravity and destruction, the film catches a glimpse of a release, a rebirth, and a rallying cry to the world to break free before it is too late. It is unadulterated anarchy, and it is bizarrely beautiful. 

Despite seemingly the entire film being told in a fever pitch of unbridled rage, with the underlying pain turned completely outward at every turn, the film also feels like one of the most nuanced depictions of mental illness you could find. For, even as the undying pain threatens to snuff everything else out, the film is simultaneously romantic, funny, and full of genuine connection and love. The film is soberingly honest, but Ramsay is not a pure cynic. Tucked away in the crevices between massive crescendos of despair are little vignettes where we see Grace and Jackson share truly beautiful moments of understanding and love, moments where family and parenthood seem like all that really matters, moments of true harmony with the natural world. Mental illness is not a monolith. While the film destabilizes, despairs, and disturbs with its sadness, rage, and borderline hallucinations, it recognizes the beautiful moments in life, separated from societal expectations and the traumas we hide away in the corners of our mind, that truly make it worth living. Ramsay could never be called a sentimentalist, and I think the grand operatic, tragic ending solidifies this, but she gets to the core of the human condition, in its mutually existent disaster and bliss, like few others can. Ramsay has leveled up to a new degree of metatextual, psychological, philosophical filmmaking that leaves the shackles of convention, civility, and mere logic behind, and what ensues is her most all-encompassing, universal story yet. This film is one of the greatest literalizations of the ever-paradoxical human psyche we have ever had the fortune of seeing. A film for perhaps nobody and everybody at the same time, Die My Love challenges you to give up on everything you thought you cared about in service of the truly divine, pure, and beautiful: a deification of the entire human race that teaches us to feed our soul above all else, even if it takes a metaphorical razing to find purity. 

9/10