Veronika Decides to Die (2009)

It's a movie worth watching b/c it guides you to search your soul in this crazy world.

Kudos to Sarah Michelle Gellar's performance & her agent landing her this movie. Last time I had the chance to view her performance was Grudge 2 and wow she became a serious actress in this one.

Maybe it's the director dared to tone down to sell our her blond pretty girl image. Instead, giving her a chance to be an actress.

Terrific script as it dares to asks us what's the meaning of life, love, reality, ... etc I am as impressed with this script as I was with "He loves me, he loves me not" Terrific music as well. Kudos to the producer to put out this amazing movie during this time of sci-fi, shock em all, trash comedy, soft porn / comedy Hollywood junk food movies

It deserves Oscar or other serious film award. At least nominations!!! Just to show Americans are not lame and stupid!!!

Fmovies: If anyone believes that going into a mental institution is about a private mansion on the Hudson, a Yamaha grand piano to play whenever (one in- tune, for that matter) and common rooms adorned with nice lamps, forget it. As for open, empty outdoor swimming pools and unsupervised indoor, full ones, well!

My worry is that anyone who does feel an affinity for this film's subject matter because they are indeed, themselves, suicidal, will feel that candy-flossed, contrived and convoluted hokums such as this will make them feel a bit better - or a little more comfortable, will only keep that thought for no longer than the 90 minutes this film goes on for.

Michelle Gellar's performance is good but what a sheer waste of David Thewlis's talents, one of England's finest character actors, for taking his part, as the dodgy Doc.

I have to admit, I was put off from the start with the usual Radiohead 'music of misery' scenario and I never really gave it a chance from then on. I could see some attractive sentiment and well-meaning toward the end but the route taken was belittling, patronising and almost dangerous.

This film is not a flashy, Hollywood story. It does not move quickly and it is not designed to be eye-catching. It is however, a poignant, beautiful piece of expert film-making.

Emily Young directs with an even pace, great attention to detail and she has a knack for focusing in on specific physical details which enrich the emotional architecture of the story. She also, most importantly, understands human behaviour and emotion.

Sarah Michelle Gellar gives a touching, powerful performance as Veronika and anchors the film's strong cast. She will captivate you.

Paulo Coelho's fantastic book is given a fantastic adaptation here. Yes, it's true that much of the story is cut for length and the setting has been changed. But the deeper messages, subtext and soul of the story are perfectly intact.

I recommend this film for any artist, any soulful human being... and anyone who's become jaded and needs to remember how miraculous life can sometimes be.

This film left me in tears... It is beautiful.

Veronika Decides to Die fmovies. Not even Thewlis can save this trash. It had potential, but ended up being a ridiculous watercolour romance. It's been described as dark and understated. It's not. It's light, obvious schmaltz. There's no attempt at any realism, and it's an insult to anyone remotely familiar with the workings of a psychiatric unit. It promises themes of suicide and mental health but shows no understanding of either, merely using them as a cheap vehicle for clumsy, clichéd, feel-good garbage. In addition, the protagonist has no redeeming qualities, or even enough personality for the viewer to care about. The music is distractingly awful, as is most of the acting and direction. It's cheesy as all hell. Even if you have another century to live, do not waste a precious 94 minutes of it on this.

For years I had a soft spot for the novel 'Veronika Decides To Die', perhaps because Coelho approached the subject material with verve, originality, sensitivity and the understanding that comes only from having lived through something similar.

When I heard of the movie, I was hoping it was going to be handled with the same deft of hand the author had used with the original incarnation of the work. I was worried that a movie of this novel would be haphazard, overtly-dramatic and, frankly, a botched effort. So when Sarah Michelle Gellar became attached to the project I was seriously relieved. Here's an actor who is so under-rated, Gellar has a considerable talent: the ability to transcend genres as an actor and succeed at it. Why she has remained so under-rated in her industry I honestly can't understand.

Her interpretation of Veronika Deklava in Veronika Decides To Die, I'm sure will be defined as being the role of Gellar's career thus far. Gellar makes this movie. Most actors have previously taken similar roles and gone for the overtly-melancholic, Hollywood-style "despair" and self-loathing, making it fraught with unreal overtly emotional behaviour that anyone who has suffered severe depression/mental-illness can tell you is usually not accurate. What Gellar does here is employ subtly, strength and honesty. Her interpretation of Veronika's despair smacks of someone who knows what she's dealing with, or at least has studied the realism of such suffering with consideration: in real life, severe depressives almost always strive to hide their despair from most of those around them. Veronika does this in the novel, and Sarah Michelle Gellar uses her talents to do it with her approach to her role in the film, and the result is an astonishing performance from her.

Gellar's Veronika is somehow far more real and affecting a character than anything thrown out in the last twenty years (e.g: Girl, Interrupted/One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and to lesser degrees movies such as Thirteen, House of Sand & Fog, The Hours...). The movie is slow, but never does it bore, or seem sluggish. I sat rapt with attention, moved to tears and frequently wishing the movie were going at a slower pace due to the astonishing performance of Gellar & indeed the rest of the cast. If you look at the novel itself: this is about Veronika, and how she effects those around her, and this is what the movie focuses on and does so almost flawlessly.

A previous reviewer described Gellar's acting here as a tour-de-force performance, commanding the screen with a subtly, sensitive touch, fraught with mixed emotion, confusion & strength. The rest of the cast are equally on top form, Erika Christensen is sad yet charming, Jonathan Tucker and particularly Melissa Leo are great and highly memorable in their supporting roles.

Not for one second did I think Gellar's Veronika was "void of emotion", on the contrary it's a performance filled with clearly conflicting emotions, broiling beneath the surface, always just a moment away from bubbling to the fore yet nearly always controlled- it's clearly a thought out, hard-worked at performance and having been in Veronika's position, having felt those emotions myself, I can see it in Gellar's performance. Her acting skills get a full workout here, she excels herself and has, I think, raised the bar for other actors in portraying hopelessness, disillusion and mental illness on screen in a way that perhaps

2008's emotional bladder infection Twilight was created as a direct result of TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Sarah Michelle Gellar was punished for her part in this with lead roles in both The Grudge and Scooby-Doo franchises. Now, freshly repentant and having reconciled with the film industry, she has returned to grace with an admirable performance in Emily Young's Veronika Decides to Die.

Based on the Paulo Coelho novel of the same name (in English anyway) Veronika Decides to Die is the story of a successful young woman, Veronika (played by Gellar) who tries to kill herself after deciding she is on a path towards a future she doesn't want. Unfortunately for her she fails and falls into a coma for several weeks, before being shipped to a mental institution where she is told damage incurred during the suicide bid will kill her within weeks.

Coelho's book focused on Veronika's freedom from constriction and her voyage of self-discovery as she came to terms with her imminent death and the freedom from responsibility that brought about. Young's film takes a more simplistic view and concentrates heavily on her love affair with Edward (Jonathan Tucker), a handsome young inmate who was struck silent after being involved a car accident. He is brooding and has pale skin. You don't see him outside during the day very much. He likes standing in the corner of darkened rooms. He's a wonderful artist.

Aside from similarities to her previous work, Gellar puts in a very strong performance as Veronika, although a confident supporting cast headed by Tucker as Edward and David Thewlis as the institution head Dr Blake help pull the film together during some of the duller moments.

As a serious exploration of anomie and the lack of control felt by many modern city-dwellers over their own lives, or a look at how removing the fear of death from our daily thoughts frees us, Veronika falls flat on its face. As a quirky little tale of love in a mental institution, it excels.