The scene in Amour I like best: In it, the air seems cold and blue from all the dust. Ambient particles swarm even though there are protective sheets draped over everything. The room is stark, stripped of all the character the couple once lovingly embellished it with. One window is open, the light streaming through hesitantly, as though it has forgotten that it is no longer permitted to enter this apartment, this house embalmed in layers of grief and plastic and imminent rot. A pigeon flies in. The husband tries to catch it so he can let it out. He is old. You don't hear his knees creak, but you can feel them in your bones. He chases this pigeon, slowly, clumsily; for what feels like a very long time. When he finally catches it, he is panting, gasping. He grasps it firmly in his two gnarled hands, as though he's afraid it might leave, when in fact he's trying to calm it. Holds it so tightly we don't know if he will crush its bones. It looks like he will. Like he wants to. He holds it for long enough that it feels as if he [sic] decision will never be made. As though she's smothering it so slowly we can barely see it happening. It is an eerie echo of how moments before, he has smothered his invalid wife with her pillow. He caresses the pigeon. The camera cuts away. [...] clutching the bird, trembling, not from ecstasy, but from hesitancy, as though he's unsure if the life-sustaining gesture is the ethical action to take. As though at any moment, he may decide it's more humane to wring its neck instead. The cruelest moment in Amour is when we realize he has let the pigeon go free.