Away from Her

Deeply moving and wondrously romantic, Away from Her marks a strong directorial debut of long time indie darling, movie veteran at a youthful age of twenty-eight, Sarah Polley.

Polley adapts the movie based on Alice Munro’s short story The Bear Came Over the Mountain. It is a story that many critics have called the greatest love story that the movies have given to us in recent years, but I find it equally divided between two eternal themes in our lives: love and aging. Grant (played by Gordon Pinsent) and Fiona (played by Julie Christie) is an intellectual couple married for 44 years. Recently Fiona starts experiencing loss of memory and is soon diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. She insists Grant send her into a nursing home and while there soon develops affections for a fellow patient Aubrey.

Polley started acting at a tender age of six and is always famous for her expressive face among indie circles. She has purposefully shunned Hollywood major productions (she is pretty clear about what she thinks of Hollywood – at one point, Fiona gives her reason for not going to movie as all the Cineplexes are showing those American garbage) and only works in movies that interest her, including maybe her most famous performance as an incest victim in her mentor Atom Egoyan’s movie The Sweet Hereafter (Egoyan is also the executive producer of Away from Her). With this new movie, she proves that not only does she look wise beyond her age, but she does have an uncanny knack for human understanding and an unerring eye for poetic beauty. Her writing brilliance first shines through her choice of the title for the movie. Throughout the movie Grant stresses that he cannot stay away from Fiona, but unfortunately he has to be away from her. There are many such paradoxes and ironies in this movie. While Grant may be away from Fiona in distance, but in his heart he is never far away. The best scene in the movie is one of the simplest. It happens at the very beginning of the movie. While Grant muses about love and life with his voiceover, Fiona and he studiously ski cross country style in the snow surrounding their cottage. At one time, they seem to have gone separate ways briefly, but then the next shot brings them back together. That scene says it all about life: it is hard work, it is tedious, it has tough patches, but the most wonderful and rewarding part about it is the togetherness you share with someone you love.

Many critics have emphasized on the romantic aspects of this movie, but it is also a lesson about aging. The first third of the movie may seem like the bottom third of Alzheimer struggle in Iris, however, Polley goes much further in her attempts showing the daily life in a nursing home and how aging affects every one of us. When Fiona comes out of the doctor’s office, she sees a baby crying in his mom’s arms. The shot poignantly displays the similarity between old age and babyhood – both are helpless; more than that, it lets us feel the fundamental difference between these two ages – one is full of hope ahead and the other only darkness and oblivion. In Away from Her, Polley seems determined to show us not just Fiona’s physical deterioration, but also what Grant goes through in his life. In literary work and on screen, we often witness the ordeal one faces when putting the loved one into a nursing facility, but we rarely see the aftermath: the loneliness and heartbreak one feels. It may be hard to take care of a sick wife, but it is no picnic to be left alone in a house with so many shared memories. Polley shows us the daily routine of Grant and Fiona’s life at the very beginning and then Fiona is gone and we watch Grant perform same household chore all by himself. His solitary figure pounds on our heart and makes us wonder between him and Fiona who has to endure the harder part.

The biggest asset in this movie are the actors, especially always wonderful Christie. Choosing these veteran actors may be the best decision Polley has made in directing this movie. I don’t mean to underestimate Polley’s skill as a director, but I doubt she needs to give much guidance to Christie and Pinsent. They have a natural chemistry between them and they cannot possibly be anything else to each other but soul mates. Christie, a screen legend, is still ravishing beautiful after all these years. When she looks into the camera, she can still seduce anyone watching her. That face, those deep blue eyes, the gray strands in her hair along with all the wrinkles make her a goddess desirable beyond any vulgarity sense but also not completely out of human reach. She can really teach a few lessons to those botox crowds. Aging gracefully and confidently is the best weapon against aging. Polley apparently is in the Chaplin school of close-up. She realizes the power of close-ups on audience emotion and besides who would want to take the camera away from Christie’s elegant face. In her long lustrous career, Christie has proved again and again that she is not just a pretty face. Here in maybe her best work ever, she captures Fiona’s fear, confusion, sadness, intelligence, fragility and style all in a seemingly effortless performance. In the middle of a dinner with her friends, Fiona forgets the name of the wine. She looks at the label, struggles with the French pronunciation that must be a second nature to her before. The pause in Christie’s movement, the despondency in her eyes, the shame she feels for behaving not sub par in front of her friends, all those feelings are delivered in that few seconds. For that alone, she probably should qualify for running in next year’s Oscar race.

There are some flaws in Polley’s work. I am disappointed that the camera always cuts off to another scene when it is implied that the characters are going to make love. It may not be Polley’s fault and MPAA may be the culprit, but if it is Polley’s decision, I find it gutless to chicken away from such natural but increasingly taboo subject in our culture. In a youth-obsessed culture, there are unspoken assumptions that old people making love must be disgusting. Who would be better to dispute that stupidity than Christie and Pinsent? Also Polley lets her political view obstruct the storytelling for a brief moment. When Fiona and Grant watch the news footages about American soldiers in Iraq, Fiona wonders aloud, “Does anyone remember Vietnam?” I completely agree with the statement, but it does not flow with the story and it feels abrupt.

After the movie, I heard people all around me commenting on the beauty of the movie and its star, Christie. I was walking behind an elderly couple with maybe their middle age daughter. They were voicing the same sentiment about Christie and were all quite taken by her grace and beauty at age 66. Then the daughter said, “So was she famous for singing with the Beatles?” I was shocked. This is Julie Christie we are talking about, someone who won Oscar for Darling, who famously wore a miniskirt to the ceremony, who made a bunch of influential 60s and 70s movies such as Doctor Zhivago and Shampoo. And this woman didn’t know who she is. Did she confuse her with the 60s rock bad girl Marianne Faithfull who used to sing with the Rolling Stones and dated Mick Jagger? At least the parents knew that Christie was famous for her Doctor Zhivago role. It is not really that woman’s fault for not knowing; it is our culture that doesn’t value anything classic and always chases some fresh young thing. To the delight of her fans, Christie has made a grand comeback and I can only hope she will come back more often to visit us on screen.