Ramón Sampedro, quadriplegic for nearly thirty years after a diving accident, wages a long public fight for the right to end his life on his own terms — a campaign that divides his family, draws in two women who come to love him, and makes him one of Spain's most famous invalids. Bardem, playing a man who cannot move from the neck down, gives a performance built almost entirely from his face and voice, and Amenábar refuses to make the film a polemic.
