AWAY FROM HER

It begins with a skillet removed from a dishwasher and mistakenly placed in a freezer. With this one absent-minded act, 60-something Fiona knows, along with her husband Grant, that something is amiss. It's almost certainly just the latest of many such "senior moments" on Fiona's part, but it's not long after this that Fiona is diagnosed as having Alzheimer's. Fiona (Julie Christie) is still sharp enough to make ironic, even insightful observations on her condition – "Sometimes there's something delicious in oblivion," she remarks at one point, while hiking in the woods with Grant – but she fully knows that with Alzheimer's things will only go from bad to worse, and worse still, with the occasional small temporary reversal until the condition finally kills her. 

Suddenly faced with the challenge of being his wife's caretaker, Fiona's husband Grant (Gordon Pinsent) agrees, at Fiona's insistence, to shop around for a nursing home for her. One of the rules of the home she is finally put in is that Fiona is not allowed to have any visitors for the first 30 days. It's the first time the couple have been apart for an extended period of time in the entire 44 years they've been married. Despite Grant's misgivings, though, Fiona checks herself in, and then, after they make love one last time, she asks him to leave.

When the 30 days are up and he is finally allowed to visit her, Grant discovers that not only does Fiona not recognize him anymore but she's fallen in love with another man there at the home, Aubrey (Michael Murphy).

While watching Away from Her I found myself asking which would be harder: being the one whose memories are slowly evaporating, or being the one forced to witness a loved one's gradual fading away, first of their memories, then of their personality. While watching I went back and forth several times before finally agreeing with John Updike's observation in his memoir, Self-Consciousness, that it's probably more heart-wrenching to be the one who's forgotten than it is to be the one doing the forgetting.

Away from Her is written and directed by Sarah Polley with stunning grace, insight and even (despite the fact that Polley is still in her 20s, and this is her directorial debut) great wisdom. Too often in movies older people are treated almost as adorable props, or at the very least as static, wizened sages who have arrived at a place in life where surprises and dramas have been permanently put behind them. In other words, they exist only to support or to foil the efforts of young people. Here we get a sense – not just with Fiona and Grant but with a handful of supporting characters as well – of personal histories fraught with tension and uncertainty, of a lives still very much in flux. The couple are given the dignity of being complex, interesting human beings with very real problems.

The movie has more than its share of unexpected moments, gentle humor, delicate insights, interesting peripheral characters, and wintry landscapes. We are given the portrait of a marriage in all its epic complexities, trials and, lest we forget, its good times, too. This is a love story, finally, one that is no less tragic in its way than Romeo and Juliet; only here – instead of young lovers fighting futilely against their feuding parents – Fiona and Grant are contending against the ravages of a cruel illness and, to no less a degree, their own rich history as a couple.

Away from Her is easily one of the best dramas of the year.