Away from Her

Away from Her Review

Away From Her is less about alzheimers and more about endearing and everlasting love-a love that can survive anything. Well, that is actually not entirely true, since the love in this film ends up being one-sided. We see a husband and wife, married for decades and never apart from each other, suddenly being torn apart when they discover she has alzheimers. It is all very moving, especially the performances by Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent. Pinsent especially plays the faithful, yet lonely husband beautifully. I love that his performance is never over-the-top and though you can tell he is hurting, hides it very well. Though there is hardly a flaw to this film, one thing that irked me and stayed with me is the awful plot device they used in regards to Christie's stay at the nursing home. Upon admittance, the patient must not have a single visitor for 30 days. Well, I'm sure you can imagine what happened once the 30 days were up, and her husband tried to visit her. It disturbed me to no end. That annoyance aside, I really loved this film, and its serenity and ability to move me with simple, yet powerful performances.

Away from Her Overview

Married for almost 50 years, Grant's (Gordon Pinsent) and Fiona's (Julie Christie) commitment to each other appears unwavering. Their daily life is filled with tenderness and humor; yet this serenity is broken by Fiona's increasingly evident memory loss - and her restrained references to a past betrayal. For a while, the couple is able to casually dismiss these unwelcome changes. But when neither Fiona nor her husband can deny any longer that she is being consumed by Alzheimer's disease, the couple is forced to wrenchingly redefine the limits of their love and loyalty - and face the complex, inevitable transition from lovers to strangers.

Away from Her Specifications

"I'm going," says a lovely, understated Julie Christie, in a heart-wrenching moment of recognition that Alzheimer's is slowly descending on her. "But I'm not gone." Away from Her, the directorial debut of young Canadian actress Sarah Polley, allows two themes--the growth of love, and the limits of the mind--to intertwine, uplift, fall, and rise again, throughout its arc. What should be relentlessly depressing is instead a film of great courage, humor, defiance--and a quality that Christie's character, Fiona, calls out in another defining moment: grace.

Away from Her chronicles a love story between Fiona and her longtime husband, Grant, played with bearlike stolidity by Gordon Pinsett, as the couple struggle with the onset and acceleration of Fiona's Alzheimer's disease. Moments of lucidity and wry observation pepper Fiona's decline, and Christie gives an unforgettable performance as a woman who is both ordinary and singular to those whom she's touched. The story is set against a frigid Canadian winter, with fields of snow as a background underscoring the bleakness of Fiona's diagnosis; yet life is constant and surprising, in the call of a meadowlark or the resurrected memory of a skunk lily. A scene of Fiona out for her daily cross-country ski shows Christie's gorgeous, sensual face in closeup against the snow, framed by a babushka, reminding the viewer of a similar scene of the decades-younger Christie in Dr. Zhivago. It's impossible not to be touched by the gifts of this extraordinary actress, through the life of this everywoman, whose very presence is shot through with grace. --A.T Hurley

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Aug 14, 2010 21:57:04