ltlacey Review of Veronika Decides to Die

Veronika Decides to Die (2009)

Another I Really Am Worthy flick for the thinking masses

[4/10 · 29 November 2010]

First off, I have read quite a bit of Paulo Coelho. His books are intense, personal, and also spiritual, though not as we would think, meaning religious. So when I heard that a movie had been made from one of his books I was a bit leery. How do you convey all of that inward retrospection and Being As One in a movie? Well, you really cannot. But this is not to say that Gellar (surprise, surprise) did not come across as the intense young woman from Coelho's story. But there are certain authors who come to mind and "Hollywood" gets their mitts on their work, and well, disaster is usually the result, and PC is one of them. In this story a young woman, obviously very depressed and who does not have such a good relationship with her parents, nor herself really, decides to kill herself, but fails. She awakens in an institution only to find out that her attempt at killing herself has in fact given her a death sentence, but now it will be prolonged. What to do? We find inner peace and meaning. Read the book instead.