AWAY FROM HER

 

 

 

by Steve Taylor                        

 

Beautifully Bergmanesque, set in a wintry landscape fitfully lit by one woman's flickering awareness and one man's long-term, stubborn love, AWAY FROM HER is one of the most remarkable and moving love stories the movies have recently given us. Made with jewel-like craft and deep human understanding, it is based on Alice Munro's poignant short story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain," about a long-married academic couple threatened by the wife's approaching Alzheimer's disease. Strikingly visualized and flawlessly acted, it's been adapted with uncommon brilliance by Canadian actress and first-time feature director Sarah Polley.

The movie seems at first to be another Alzheimer's drama in the vein of the Judi Dench vehicle "Iris." AWAY FROM HER stars Julie Christie (still loved by the camera at sixty-six) as brainy Fiona, wed for forty-four years to the occasionally philandering, now retired college professor, Grant (veteran Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent), and faced with sporadic but noticeable memory loss; she forgets words like "wine." Fiona, against Grant's wishes, decides to check herself into an assisted living facility. At this point I was prepared for a drama of the slow, sad spectacle of the ravages of a loved one's progressive and incurable disease.

Munro's tale, though, is full of surprises. When Grant comes back to the facility after an enforced thirty-day absence, heart full of love and holding a bouquet, he finds that Fiona has not only seemingly forgotten him but has developed a crush on fellow patient Aubrey (Michael Murphy), a sullen, silent man who seems jealous of her every move. No matter what Grant tries to do, Fiona and Aubrey resist—something observed sympathetically but unhelpfully by a good-hearted nurse. The triangle becomes more complex when Grant visits Aubrey's wife, Marian (Olympia Dukakis at her tartest and earthiest), and begins hatching a plot. What happens next seems to follow a Chekhovian path until the plot springs a stunning surprise.

AWAY FROM HER is one of the best English-language films so far this year. The twenty-eight-year-old Polley's gifts are impressive, and she and her actors may be factors at next year’s Oscars. And they deserve to be—especially Christie, who gives one of the finest performances of her career. Christie emphasizes the vibrant woman still there underneath, the scraps of brilliance that remain, filling her once-faithless husband with such anguish. Pinsent, by contrast, plays an egotistical, pleasure-loving and self-absorbed intellectual who sees his world being shattered and who must try to be and stay unselfish with each painful new turn. Dukakis provides just the right counterpoint, providing salty, acidic wisecracks by a woman with few illusions.

If you feel put off by the subject, don’t be. The spectacle of love in the midst of despair can be a healing one, and it is here. In the hands of this consummate young filmmaker and her perfect cast, AWAY FROM HER is like a light in darkness, a small beacon in an immensity of cold anxiety, summoning us to radiance.

 

Steve Taylor is a retired attorney and magistrate who is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association. His criticism may also be heard each Friday on WHQR-FM (91.3)