"Sometimes you have to let go of what you can't live without." Based on Alice Munroe's short story, Sarah Polley's directorial debut is an extraordinary portrait of aging, Alzheimer's, love, and the transformation of relationships.
“Away From Her” starts out like a documentary, rather cool and just stating some fundamental facts about Alzheimer's Disease, but then it takes on a dynamic that is much more emotional and more developmental - unexpected things begin to happen. In a sense the unexpected is the underlying theme of the movie. It is based on a short story by Alice Munro and was written for the screen by 28-year old Sarah Polley, an actress who wanted to try her hand at writing and directing. If “Away From Her” is any indication of her talents in that direction, she may never get in front of a camera again. To think of someone this young understanding the elderly this well is truly extraordinary.
We all think our lives will follow a common path, through the ‘Dark Woods’ of experience with a minimum of suffering until we arrive at our ‘Golden Years,’ where the women plant flowers and the men play golf and fall asleep in front of the television. But alas, you never know what might come along to challenge those expectations. And there is really no way to be ready for what might come. The essential thing is to remain open, resilient, and to be prepared to deal with and eventually accept what life throws your way. That seems to be the main lesson of this tale about Alzheimer's, relationships, and immediate love and love lost. The film is nicely put together, nothing fancy, with the focus on the narrative and the psychology of the people afflicted, those with the disease and those attached to those who suffer from it. Everyone in this movie is trying to make their way through new experience, and there is a certain quality of bravery in their behavior and questing. There is also a sensitivity, which is a joy to observe, despite the rather depressing material of the film. You don’t have the blues when it ends. The tagline of the movie is a saying that one of the caregivers at the facility Fiona (Julie Christie) has landed in sees one day on her way to work, on a marquee at a church. It says: ”Sometimes you have to let go of what you can’t live without.”
The first chapter of the story is the beginning of Fiona’s breakdown. She puts a frying pan in the freezer rather than a cabinet. She begins to be forgetful to an extreme and eventually can’t find her way home. She has something boiling on the stove but goes off on a cross-country skiing jaunt without turning off the gas. Her husband Grant (Gordon Pinsent) is a retired college professor and he has been happily married to Fiona for 44 years. They are a handsome, wrinkled couple in their mid-sixties enjoying their retirement somewhere in Canada. But her increasing lapses and bewilderment make it obvious she needs care and watching. They have to make a decision about what to do and they both feel they must do it together. Although both are reluctant, they see the writing on the wall.
Chapter Two is Meadow Lake, a facility for Alzheimer's patients. When Fiona enters it the surprises begin. First of all, the director of the facility tells Grant that one of their rules is the spouse must stay away for the first 30 days so the new patient can “settle in.” He doesn’t realize what the impact is going to be, for when he comes to see her after a month he finds her already attached to another man named Aubrey (Michael Murphy) and very foggy about who he is, tending to see him as just another suitor. Grant is crushed, but it is only the first of many jolts he will have to put up with as time goes on. He becomes a kind of reluctant and heartbroken voyeur of his wife of 44 years, as he sits and observes her from a distance being affectionate with another man, someone somewhat worse off than she is. He feels jealous and seems to stew over some indiscretion of his own in the past, as if he is now being punished for it. They do talk occasionally but she is rarely present to him as his wife, except one moment near the end of the film when she does acknowledge him as her husband and that he had made her happy.
Chapter Three has to do with Aubrey’s wife Marian (Olympia Dukakis) who Grant goes to for someone to talk to, someone who understands how he feels. Aubrey is back home and Marian doesn’t intend to ever put him back in the facility. But Fiona takes a turn for the worse with Aubrey gone from Meadow Lake. Marian is something of a philosopher and Grant enjoys listening to her. One night they go out on a ‘date,’ and they end up in bed. As the old saying goes, love the one you are with. The final irony in the film is Grant persuades Marian to allow Aubrey to return to Meadow Lake for their sake, as he was just vegetating at home, watching ESPN endlessly. Aubrey’s presence is probably the only thing that will get Fiona out of her funk. Everyone seems to realize, disease or no disease, it’s better to be in a viable relationship, no matter what the limitation may be, than wasting away in a vegetative state. We see Grant delivering Aubrey to Fiona, who is now a different person and reaching out on her own for a new connection, just as Grant is in his new life-space. In both cases life moves on.
Gordon Pinsent’s performance is something to behold. I have never seen him before, probably because he is a Canadian actor. He is the utter embodiment of sensitivity and a man struggling with a situation that almost breaks him in two. Most of his acting is with his eyes, his body, and his lines are short, honest, and concise. Julie Christie is outstanding too, in a difficult role. Some reviewers have a tendency to see the pair as the reincarnation of two Ingmar Berman characters, like Liv Ullman and Erland Josepheson. When you add the North Country and a lot of winter scenes with snow, you can understand relating them to Bergman’s actors - but “Away From Her” is much more optimistic than almost any Bergman film. There may be a chill in the air and snow on the ground but fire still burns in the wounded heart.
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