But "Old Cats," written and directed by Sebastián Silva and Pedro Peirano (originally released in Chile in 2010, long before "Amour"), is less concerned with the austere reality of death than with the stress and mess of living.
And while this policy document, the brainchild of left-wing wonks at the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), may seem absurd and unattainable in our bleak and austere reality, in their world of progressive think-tankery, anything is possible.
Described like this, the film may sound austere, but the reality is the opposite – a film whose power derives from its remarkable atmosphere of hushed intensity.
It is an indictment of capitalism and a practical argument for socialism in the world as it is, in Miliband's characteristic voice: measured, even austere, in confronting uncomfortable realities, yet deeply humane and optimistic.
But the whole fiasco is a nice reminder of the fact that while cryptography, like all branches of mathematics, is by nature austere and precise, the reality in which it has to be implemented is messy and complicated.
With millions of followers on Twitter and a bronze medal at last year's Olympics, and now as the star of a popular reality TV show, Splash, Daley is an athlete who, like David Beckham before him, has successfully straddled the austere, highly disciplined world of professional athleticism and the razzle and showbiz of modern celebrity.
The budget shows how much trouble the Russian economy is in and how unwilling the government is to face up to reality.It's an austere affair: 700 billion roubles ($17.8 billion) of previous spending plans have been axed.
The result, even in comedy, was memorably austere, combining a wintry poetry with acute concern for social reality.
He says of his regimented theory that "all traits of reality worthy of the name can be set down in an idiom of this austere form if in any idiom" (1960, 228) and speaks of "limning the true and ultimate structure of reality" (1960, 221).
Outwardly as austere and high-minded as a branch of the Cistercian monastic order, the reality is very different.
