WhatzUp - Leisure Time Weekly for Northeast Indiana

Away From Her
by Catherine Lee

Julie Christie doesn’t make many movies these days, but she chooses her roles wisely. In the last 10 years or so she’s played Gertrude in Kenneth Branaugh’s film adaptation of Hamlet, the unpleasant mother of Kate Winslet in Finding Neverland, she's appeared in a Harry Potter movie and she starred in Afterglow.

She is wonderful in each of these very good films. When she's in a movie, it is rather dependably worth a look. Her new film, Away From Her, is one of the best movies of the year, and her performance is the kind that wins year-end accolades.

Away From Her is a wonderful, surprising film. The movie shows us with subtlety and delicacy how complex and full of changes the relationship between two people can be. The catalyst for reflecting on the relationship between Fiona (Christie) and her husband Grant (Gordon Pinsent) is the appearance of symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in Fiona.

She can’t remember simple things like the word "wine" as she makes a toast. She tells Grant, “I think I may be beginning to disappear.” Grant appears to adore her. He doesn’t understand when she insists on leaving their home to live in a facility called Meadowlake that will care for her. It’s a very nice place, but it isn’t home. And home looks like a very nice place.

When Grant is told that it is the policy of Meadowlake that he must stay away for the first 30 days Fiona is in residence so she can settle in, he says that he’s never wanted to be “away from her.” But when he is away from her, things change. Away from Her isn’t a movie about the physical toll of Alzheimer’s disease. Rather, it's more about how the disease puts the life these two have shared in a very different light.

Alzheimer’s disease has been the subject of other movies, and it has made for some very sad films. It could be the kind of subject that you just don’t think you want to buy a ticket to see. But Away From Her, by not dwelling on the physical ravages of the disease but instead using the disease as a way to examine the 44 year marriage of Grant and Fiona, achieves something very touching. Away From Her isn’t a predictable story about disease.

Away From Her is based on a short story by Alice Munro called “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.” It has been adapted for the screen and directed by Sarah Polley. Polley is 28 years old, and this is her feature-length directorial debut. Her work here is a remarkable accomplishment. The film looks wonderful, and Polley gets wonderful performances from all cast members. The script is spare and smart. It is especially stunning that such a young woman is so adept at teasing out the small kindnesses and long-smoldering insults of characters so much older. The film is mature far beyond Polley's age or experience.

Polley herself has acted in some very sober and melancholy films. She’s perhaps best known for her role in Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, a film so heart-wrenching that it makes the challenge of directing Away From Her seem a little less grim.

Egoyan is an executive producer of Away From Her. He and Polley are both Canadian. Set in Ontario, Polley’s film has a very loving sense of place, complete with music from fellow Canadians Neil Young and k.d. lang.

Home for Grant and Fiona is a comfortable, light-filled house on a lake. It’s the kind of place that seems stuffed with happy memories and the objects collected during a comfortable life. They are surrounded by natural beauty outside and seem to take care to fill their lives with consideration for each other.

When Grant is allowed to see Fiona after 30 days, she has changed. She almost seems to have forgotten who Grant is. She’s become very attached to another patient named Aubrey (Michael Murphy). He’s a sullen, difficult wheelchair-bound guy, but Fiona doesn’t want to leave his side.

But Grant keeps visiting, and Fiona has moments and days when she seems nearly fine. Polley shows us flashbacks of memories from the perspective of each of them. We learn that Grant, a retired college professor, had various relationships with students back in his day. He seems more than a bit nervous that Fiona might blurt out some uncomfortable accusation at any moment. When she starts to tell a story, she says, “Don’t be nervous. It’s a good story.”

Fiona’s dependence on Aubrey leads Grant to seek out Aubrey’s wife, Miriam. Olympia Dukakis plays Miriam, a woman filled with much more sass and vinegar than Fiona. She’s very weary of Grant and thinks he’s kind of a jerk, which he is in many ways. But they develop a relationship that is more than just a comfort.

Away From Her is filled with little moments of humor and heartbreak, and it shows us the resilience of love, even as it acknowledges the absurdities and failures that are an inescapable element of any attempt to sustain a relationship over decades.

Christie’s performance, with its moments of alarming clarity and wit about the past and moments of touching vagueness about the present, is most poignant; it shows us the persistence of feelings when the incidents that inspire those feelings cannot be recalled.

It is odd that in the flashbacks of a much younger Fiona another actress is used. It seems like such an odd choice when images of young Christie are so unforgettable. Aside from footage of her in Darling, Dr. Zhivago, Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait and McCabe and Mrs. Miller, to name just a few, I can’t imagine there isn’t footage of Christie just living that would have worked. Longtime fans like myself don’t need to see her to remember her. Maybe she is just too beautiful as a young woman to be believed in this role. But she is still so beautiful, with such a caressing voice and sympathetic expression. She is an avatar of all good things female, and I would have loved to see the real history of her to reinforce how wonderful she is now.

Catherine Lee is the executive director of Fort Wayne Cinema Center, the only independently operated movie theater in Fort Wayne, specializing in independent, foreign, documentary, specialty and classic films.