"Away from Her" (2006) - Movie Review

What can be described as an excruciating pain? A pain beyond physical imagination and deeply cuts the soft and tender hearts of loving people. And it becomes even more depressing to realize that the reason for it is totally out of control, at least at the moment. They go back to where everything started, in life. At the end of their life standing next to each other, what if that is the time to lose the love of their life, not by death but by forces beyond anyone’s control? Grant (Gordon Pinsent) is at that stage of his life. His wife Fiona (Julie Christie) is diagnosed with the Alzheimer’s disease for which there is no cure. The person affected by this disease basically loses the ability to remember and function as usual. It is a torture to lose yourself in front of the loved ones.

The whole discovery of Fiona getting affected by the Alzeimer’s disease is itself portrayed as the symptoms of the disease. We do not know what is happening but loosely able to associate with the events. We see Grant driving to an address and find totally clueless and ridiculous to explain himself to the other person in that place. In the mean while, the secluded and settled life of Grant and Fiona are depicted as flash back. Fiona’s strange enactments and the way she confuses herself are confusing for us too. Then slowly the experience on the screen is realized as the effect of it. The same time they realize the fact that the disease has affected her, is the same time we get into clear. Ironically and artistically portrayed are those instances. The film while is the depiction and sufferings of the disease, it travels beyond those. Relationships, care, forgive ness, regret and compromises.

The story hits hard and emotional not alone during the brutal fact of accepting the disease but deciding to live with it. Fiona decides to get into a nursing home. And as per the “policy” of the home, no visitors are allowed to see the resident during the first 30 days. There has always been lot of days when my dad went out of town to work. It has lasted more than a week. My mother had her hands full though with myself and my brother as kids. Once my dad came out of his Brain Tumour surgery and I remember the first time he left out of town. He went out for a day and I know how much my mom was depleted of something. I cannot imagine some one who has lived by side for 45 years and had to separate for 30 days which is a cruel punishment. While death is worse, it is defined and the person is never going to come back. Rather their existence is not in question and that would aid the person grieving to bite the bullet to get out of it. Grant knows that his wife is in the nursing home and he cannot see her. It is tough and it hits him hard. And when he goes to visit her after that, the nurses warn him the effects of the disease. In a way they gear up the viewers to expect the dejection. This whole sequence of separation takes up 5 – 10 minutes but it carries so much emotion and energy. The film itself carries copious amounts of these which constantly remind how complicated emotions are.

“The Straight Story” strongly and emotionally portrayed the old age and what life means at the end of it. “About Schmidt” handled the emotional loneliness of another old man. In both the cases the concentration on the better half is minimal but in depth. They do not occupy the screen but the effects were shown. Here along with Grant, we see how Fiona is losing the touch of her old life. For Grant it is devastating and in fact questions the behaviour of Fiona as a way of punishment of his acts during the marriage. We doubt it, for a moment. And there is a moment in the screen with Nurse Kristy (Kristen Thomson) and she confronts Grant. It is an awakening for him. The whole puzzle of why Grant is knocking on someone’s house is clear.

This is easily the most impressive moving and poetic film I have seen this year. Director Sarah Polley never wastes any character and makes us to judge or conclude. There are tiny monumental characters wandering every now and then. While it may seem quite cinematic to portray the head of the nursing home, Madeleine (Wendy Crewson) as insensitive, she is doing her job while there alternative ways of doing it. It is a small representation of how health business has become in the constant suing society and also some mishaps of the other side of the spectrum. And the relationship of Grant with Marian (Olympia Dukakis) is another interesting point of reference in a tough strain in the threads of intense feelings.

The film is the convoluted representation of relationship. It says what really matters are the intent. Intentions of doing something extremely unthinkable for compromising and aiding some one you love a little bit happier. Accepting what happened and doing what is necessary even if it comes to thrashing the relationship of a long marriage. It lightens that old age is not the end but a start of another new life. It is tough as it was in youth, with the different constraints. This is an attempt to identify it and live for it.