“Away From Her”
Rating: ★★★★
Sarah Polley’s “Away From Her” opens with a couple cross country skiing in the snow side by side. The man drifts away to a distance for a while but his and the woman’s paths eventually converge back and they ski on. The question is: how does the drift happen and can separation be mended together completely?
It is an apt symbolism for this heartrending tale of an old married couple who come to terms with the fact that the wife may be losing her mind to Alzheimer’s. This is the kind of story that can go for knee-jerk sentiment but Polley’s “Away From Her” goes straight for the soul. It knows that emotional pain is magnified not when people cry out in front of a loved one but when they can’t.
The movie stars Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent as Fiona and Grant Anderson, who have been happily married for 44 years. Fiona starts doing forgetful things such as putting a frying pain in the fridge. They joke about it at first (“Don’t worry, I’m just losing my mind”) but soon she is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. When she says, “I’ve reached the stage,” he is reluctant about committing her to a nursing home, fearing it will be for good.
She eventually convinces him to bring her to a nursing home run by Madeleine (Wendy Crewson) with the help of nurses such as Kristy (Kristen Thomson). The nursing home, however, prevents him from seeing her for 30 days so that the patients can settle in properly. When he returns, she has seemingly forgotten him and is fondly attached to another fellow patient with Alzheimer’s, Aubrey (Michael Murphy). He persists by visiting almost everyday to try to remind her who he is.
A lesser movie would have, at this point, episodes of weeping and sobbing but “Away From Her” avoids every temptation to fall into that cliché. Instead, it is about how a man must decide how his lifelong expression of love may have to change at the face of his wife’s decline and readjustment. If Fiona is finding solace with a fellow patient and does not remember him, should Grant let her find her renew her happiness and comfort with another man or persist in reminding her of a love she may never recall again? He ponders this question along with Aubrey’s wife, Marian (Olympia Dukakis).
This is the first film for writer and director, Sarah Polley, who is now only 28 and has already been recognized as a tremendous young actress in the independent film world. The tutelage under older veteran directors in previous films must have had a great influence on her, namely Atom Egoyan, who executive produced this film. Much like Egoyan’s films, she gains real power in her material by showing the arc of emotional turmoil in a matter-of-fact, naturalistic fashion.
A character with Alzheimer’s is one of the most difficult roles to play because the actor must convey a sense of genuine mystery of what one can remember and how much that self has returned, if at all. Veteran actress Julie Christie is more than up to the task, adding subtle nuances to leave us in constant wonder of what she is thinking and suggest darker weathers of her subconscious. She’s also rarely looked more radiant, even in her 60s, and she has to be to express the youthful beauty that Grant fell in love with in the first place.
While Christie deserves wide praise for her performance, our real empathetic entry into the story is Gordon Pinsent as her husband. There are fewer heartbreaking things in the world than to see a lifetime of shared, loving memories become unshared and Grant must keep all those emotions bottled up inside. The camera often just simply focuses on his face and Pinsent’s dreary eyes and facial nuances suggest more sadness and yearning than a million tears could.
What finally supplants Away From Her its final, greater emotional Rubik's Cube is in showing how the Alzheimer's disease may not be the only cause for the drift in the couple. I will leave you to find out how that is, except to state that it communicates the truth that in marriage, women are more understanding of men's ignorant faults than they can fathom. He may be incapable of comprehending being away from her but that does not mean he is always thoughtful enough to reflect on it.
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