Product Description

Academy Award nominee Javier Bardem (Before Night Falls) delivers a powerful and sensitive portrayal of a quadriplegic who fights to win the right to end his life with dignity. Based on a true story.

DVD Features:Audio Commentary:Director CommentaryDeleted Scenes:Documentaries:"A trip to The Sea Inside" Making-ofStoryboards:Theatrical Trailer:

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7781 in DVD
• Brand: NEW Line Home Video
• Released on: 2005-05-17
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: Catalan, Galician, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Dubbed in: English
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 125 minutes

Amazon.com
Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 2004, The Sea Inside is a life-affirming film about a man who wishes to die. That may seem like a massive contradiction, but in the hands of director Alejandro Amenábar (Open Your Eyes, The Others) and actor Javier Bardem (Before Night Falls), this fact-based Spanish drama concerns the final days of Ramón Sampedro, the quadriplegic poet who waged a controversial campaign for his right to die. He was denied this right for 30 years, and ultimately arranged for his own assisted suicide, but this remarkable film--and Bardem's keenly intelligent performance--examines the hotly-debated issue of assisted suicide with admirable depth and humanity, just as Sampedro did until his death in 1998. For Sampedro, death was preferable to severe paralysis (he even refused to use a wheelchair), but the film does not suggest a "disposable" attitude toward disability. Instead, it's a thoughtful meditation on life and love as gifts to be cherished, and a challenging drama that begs each viewer to examine their own personal beliefs about what makes life worth living. You may not agree with Sampedro and his ultimate denial of life, but The Sea Inside will urge you to ponder how you would react under similar circumstances, and that makes it a profoundly meaningful film. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker
The director Alejandro Amenábar's follow-up to his big American hit ("The Others") is a Spanish-language film-the true-life story of Ramón Sampedro, a quadriplegic who led a campaign in favor of his right to die. As Sampedro, Javier Bardem gives a small miracle of a performance. Confined to his bed, unable to move, Bardem has an uncanny ability to express mystery and resilience. The movie centers on Sampedro's loving family and the two women who try to change his life (one supports his euthanasia, the other doesn't). The dialogue is, at times, poetic, and there's a moving, somnambulistic feel to the film-it slowly drifts asleep. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker