Away From Her

Away From Her is not the type of movie I usually go out to see, as on its face it appears to be a disease-of-the-week movie, of which there are countless on TV. But two things drew me: one, the performance of Julie Christie was getting raves, and even at this early stage of the year she was being touted for an Oscar nomination, and two, I was interested in seeing the directorial debut of Sarah Polley, who is an interesting actress and was bound to give this well-worn genre an interesting spin.

The disease in question here is Alzheimer's. Christie is a woman, still glamorous in her sixties, who is starting down the slope. At first she does small things, like putting the frying pan into the freezer. But when she wanders off while cross-country skiing, she and her husband both realize she needs institutional care. She is admitted to a fancy care center with an officious staff, but their policy is that after admission, the patient is to receive no visitors for thirty days. The husband, Gordon Pinsent, is dismayed that after the thirty days is up, Christie seems to have forgotten who he is, and has instead formed an attachment to a male patient.

Polley has adapted a short story by Alice Munro, which I have not read. Munro is Canadian, as is Polley, and this film is distinctly Canadian, with its wintry silences. The subject matter is quite grim, but Polley doesn't allow sloppy sentimentality do enter her script. She doesn't let her actors chew the scenery, which is common in a film about a debilitating illness.

Though Christie is getting a lot of attention, I was particularly impressed with Gordon Pinsent. He plays the doting husband with an interesting combination of hope and world-weariness. As one of the nurses correctly guesses, he wasn't always the doting husband, and he and Christie had their difficulties in the past (in one of the few laugh-out-loud moments, Pinsent remarks that Christie's long-term memory is quite good when she recalls one of is indiscretions). The burdens he carries can be seen in his craggy face, his eyes like pinpricks in snow.

I always admired the performance of Olympia Dukakis as the wife of the patient that forms an attachment to Christie. Dukakis and Polley team to make the character avoid falling into the pit of cliche.

Away From Her is a bit slow-going, but is a clear-eyed look at aging, disease and the devotion formed during a long marriage.