Express At Berlinale: All of us will die one day, but what if we could live forever?

Does death come as the end? And how final is that end? Poets and philosophers are not the only ones who have rhapsodised over the cyclical nature of all existence: if you are born, then one day, you will die.

Medical science has taken giant strides in being able to save lives, and is pushing boundaries in this field with each passing day. But no one yet has found a way to prevent the cessation of life.

The ‘what if’ question — what if we could live forever- is one that has seen countless iterations, but it’s been strictly rhetorical. But in movies, everything is possible, and this business of stayin’ alive is the central theme of ‘Another End’, an Italian film of intrigue and simmering power starring Gael Garcia Bernal, Renate Reinsve and Berenice Bejo.

The film, directed by Piero Messina, is set in the near future, where a technological leap manages to place the memories of a dead person in a living body. Bernal plays a man who is unable to come to terms with the loss of his wife in an accident. His sister ( Bejo), who works with the organisation which ‘matches’ the dead person with a living body, ensures that the consciousness of the wife is ‘placed’ within the limber body of Reinsve.

The film is futuristic only to the extent of having this kind of technology available to those who desperately need it ; in every other respect, it belongs to the earth as we know it. Grieving humans, especially those whose loved ones die in an accident which they feel responsible for, always feel that they never had the time to say the things they would have, if they had known such a thing would happen.