The movie is powerful. The book is better, yes, but only because there is more room in the book to do what the movie faithfully also did: to portray the quiet way in which the survivors of global, nuclear holocaust, choose the end of their lives. Unlike most movies dealing with this theme, chaos is somehow averted, and everyone somehow just keeps on going about their everyday life until the very end.

The acting is superb, and indeed leaves the viewer lamenting the fate of the characters --- which is to say, they did their job well. More than anything, it is the small every-day details of the characters' lives, their history, their relationship towards one another, their love for one another --- all of this in the face of certain and impending doom --- that endears us to these characters and leave us pained at their passing.

The book and the movie made me think of the Bible verse 'for where your treasure is, there your heart is as well'. Each of the characters in this story chooses to end it with their treasure, if they can help it. From the passing characters who spend as much time as possible at The Club drinking themselves to the end, to the supporting characters like the one who loved car racing and chose to die next to his car, to the main romantic characters who choose duty and love at the end, their heart was where their treasure lay, and they ended pursuing their treasure.

One problematic plot point is the too-easily accepted option for euthanasia. The argument that a painful death trumps any other moral consideration does not even have a token line against it in the film and it undermines the main thrust of the story. The story is meant to be a regretful ode to life --- and regretful because the world ended it before it could discover how beautiful life is. And yet these same characters who mourn the stupidity of life destroyed --- willingly destroy their own lives. If life is beautiful and destroying it is idiotic, then one would want more --- not less --- life.

Aside from the suicide issue, the story stands up. It ennobles life, decency, and love.