Away from Her (2007)

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Having reluctantly signed his wife into an institution after an Alzheimer's diagnosis, a Canadian college professor has to cope with his wife forgetting who he is in this low key yet potent drama. The film is best known for nabbing Julie Christie a Golden Globe and SAG award for her performance, yet she is curiously a supporting player here for the most part as the film progresses from being about her feeling that she is "beginning to disappear" to her husband coping with her condition. The film has drawn comparisons to the latter 'Still Alice', but whereas the Julianne Moore film is told from her point of view as she loses her mind, this one is really the husband's story. Happily, lead actor Gordon Pinsent is up to the task and delivers an even more layered performance than Christie's - one full of anger, sorrow, bitterness and resentment. The dialogue is also very good too, full of philosophical quips ("it's never too late to become what you may have been"). Focusing on the husband's perspective, 'Away from Her' does not quite deliver the same emotional jolts as 'Still Alice', but if one avoids drawing comparisons, it is a pretty solid film for a first time director (former child actress Sarah Polley). The intermittent flashbacks fit well into the yearning-for-past tapestry of the film too, though it would appear that some out there find them confusing.

AWAY FROM HER stars Julie Christie as Fiona, a woman who looks vital, regal, yet who is succumbing to Alzheimers. The progressive dementia rips apart what appears to be a storybook marriage to Grant (Gordon Pinsent, in a finely nuanced turn), a former college professor. Married for forty-four years (and childless), they spend their days cooking, taking walks, skiing, and reading to each other in their log cabin by a lake, hardly needing anyone else's company. Until, that is, Fiona starts putting freshly washed pans away in the refrigerator. And can no longer remember how to pronounce the word "wine" or what it means, even as she holds the bottle in her hand. Eventually, the last glorious 20 years they've spent together tucked away in their own private idyll are peeled away, with only the ache of older memories -- "All those sandals, Grant," Fiona says, wincing at his infidelities, "all those pretty girls" -- to keep her company. When Fiona decides to check into an assisted-living facility, it feels like, for a change, she's deserting Grant. And when she rekindles an attachment with Aubrey (Michael Murphy), a man she used to know, it feels like the ultimate abandonment.

The last thing I expected Away From Her to be is funny. The first section of the film has a remarkable sense of humour which really doesn't prepare you for the utterly heart-wrenching mid-section. It's truly painful to watch our protagonist watches his wife not only not recognise him but fall in love with another man. The performances make the film, Gordon Pisent is terrific but Julie Christie is astounding. However, the plot does drift a bit too often. There was far too many conversation scenes and not enough doing in the scenes that didn't involve Pisent and Christie. But it's a wise film that feels old yet spirited at heart. Unforgettable stuff.8/10

Away From Her could very well be the first suspicion riddled; identity orientated thriller revolving around paranoia, as well as that indelible sense of threat a lead often has in those sorts of films, that is born out of someone being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, that there's ever been. Such a statement will make the film sound cheap and nasty or exploitative; on the contrary, it is an immensely astute and really rather mature piece of work. If there is this sense at various times throughout Away From Her that the film strikes us as thriller-like, complete with the aforementioned characteristics of paranoia and distrust with those whom the word 'distrust' should never even register, then it is because of a remarkable cut-and-thrust atmosphere the film has throughout in its depiction of a person's world unravelling and everyone within it only appearing to turn against them.Indeed, the film will begin in the present before going back in time for its depiction of certain proceedings - starting with the elderly male lead in Grant Anderson (Pinsent) visiting someone initially suspicious of this man before having them turn into one of the very few allies our lead Grant appears to have left. There is a sense of the lead travelling here, and then residing here, as a specific story is told which is actually more broadly linked to the newfound ally's own tragic back-story than one would think. Grant speaks to this newfound friend, and the general atmosphere as things progress and we start to understand things a little more has it feel like someone is hiding out at a safe-house whilst recounting recent tales of people, whom they operated with for many years, veering away from them. With snow on the ground outside as far as the eye can see and this sense of shifting norms within specific patriarchies as immense changes unravel in a person's life prominent, the whole thing is made to sound like a political thriller. As the tale is recounted, we observe both suspicion and paranoia taking over Grant's life as plates shift and new orders kick in; the ambiance in the adjacent room a sports commentary continually speaking of a contest in which the duelling between two fighting sides is apparent.The depiction of how Grant came to be at this stage is what follows; the man having been more than happily married to a certain Fiona (Christie) for a great-many number of years and himself now serving as a retired university lecturer. This in mind, we deduce that Grant cannot be too much of a slouch in regards to certain academic and logical standards, whilst the revealing that his career subject was that of history puts across a sense that the man has always had a firm eye on the past – a professional standard which will now spill over into more personal realms. The pair appear to be in a decent state of matrimony, the couple skirting through what appears to be a pre-laid track through the snow in this, the nether regions of snowy Ontario, Canada, inferring a metaphorical reading from the same page and epitomising this blissful occupying of the same plains.The opening stock footage of a grainy Fiona in her younger years, and of which infers a kind of 'memory' aesthetic, appears far more prominent when it is revealed older Fiona at this time is loosing her more immediate memory – an item of such ugliness and frank sensitivity that it is initially introduced through a juxtaposition with a photogenic yellow flower designed to spark off a pleasant memory that she can no longer recall. It is further established Fiona's functioning mind may very well be deteriorating when a logical theoretical exercise proposed to her by a doctor about a fire inside of a cinema isn't answered particularly diligently; the film doing well to distract us from the situation with a later diegetic 'jab' between the two on screen characters at the American film industry, this being a Canadian independent.From these dangerous foundations comes Fiona's moving into a care home at the discretion of Grant, the catch being he is not allowed to see her for a period of several weeks by which time it is feared she will have forgotten him. Out of this, an impressive and highly involving tale is spun which manages to capture the tragedy of the situation alongside a particular tone of positivity or upliftingess; a sense that if this newfound scenario is what's best for her, then so be it. In a sense, the film is about letting go and about recognising times past and trying to move on – one might read the film into being about states of grieving and yet nobody has died; the element of death a slow, ongoing process of memory loss resulting in the premature distancing of one person to another. The film makes for fascinating viewing and the director is a certain Sarah Polley, a Canadian actress here taking up the directorial reigns for the first time while creating a very precise, rather ambitious, drama which hits the right notes.