"Away We Go" (2009) - Movie Review

This is the generation basked in the aura of cynicism. The doubt and despair is not alone towards the politics and media but in the tradition defining the purpose of men and women, relationships and families. Sam Mendes takes an indie route through the eye glasses of an American couple on this cynicism in a mellow tour around the northern United States. And the movie transcends into a film without a purpose and I mean it in a good way. The search for the objective is not a burning question for the film to end, which it does, in the tone of how the rest of the story takes place, cliched but funny, softening into melodramatic but moving and a refreshing feel of a pleasant time. We are amongst the trends and types of relationship with sometime reeking with self righteousness but mostly with yearnings unmet and the sorrows in the walls of the houses the couples visit. They are finding their walls. “Away We Go” is not a strikingly best film but a memory to reminisce as the days go by and would make it one of the best films.

We are interlaced into this one person and character by the elongated existence between our living and the dying to form an opinion. We change a little, may be not but the trust and hope for the remaining days of the lives is a fear swallowing very slowly until death. The bond of marriage is a name and a label but it is the crucial factor in a relationship. A symbol of the embarkment towards something binding. And that is scary. If it is not desired then there is another scare of being departed. It is the Catch - 22 of the cynic. In “Away We Go”, there is Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) an early thirty couple living together expecting a baby. They are excited and trembled of this life changing event. Burt mostly is excited while Verona feels, well not exactly sure but sure she would make an interesting mother.

What Sam Mendes wants to see in Burt and Verona is not some dysfunctional comedy but the prefabbed normal couple. That regularity label might be argued on the misconstrued observation. Looking closer Burt and Verona represent the moderately well off but beings living on their own situation. They are not suburban role models but simpletons of the modern world, someone who could afford to fly, ride and dine, well. Their middle class status is the disorganized house. Is it me or is seeing John Krasinski bearded with normal clothes seem too weird? But fit they well for the film they shot.

Burt and Verona decide to go places around the country and decide to begin a life of their own, now that Burt’s parents (Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara) are suddenly leaving to Belgium for their dream life style. The couple will be visiting their old friends, brother, sister and some acquaintance. All will be married and every one portray a marriage in various situation and formed philosophies. They weigh their future town by the couple they meet. May be because that is their scale of what kind of change that would impose on them in long run.

They goto Phoenix where Verona’s old boss Lily (Allison Janey) is loud, over the edge and has a husband (Jim Gaffagan) having his moments of monologue which freaks and entertains. Verona is little bigger than the usual 6 month pregnant women. Every one reminds to remind that without inhibition. They goto Madison where Burt’s child hood friend Ellen (Maggie Gyllenhaal) lives the pure human life. They are the organic freaks or the paranoid nature fanatics, however we like it. Their smell of self righteousness is suffocating and stinks of condescend with carefully placed softness. Their college friends in Montreal,Tom and Munch (Chris Messina and Melanie Lynskey) seem to have the perfect life and marriage. When Burt and Verona find that, they would be pleased but then made self realized of what they are up for in the upcoming sadness in them. They make unexpected stop over at Burt’s brother Courtney’s (Paul Schneider) place where they get another lesson from themselves.

Burt and Verona love each other very much in the movie way and in the real way in different angles. They are moving into their new life where they got to evaluate something of themselves. They look for places and people they could get an idea and get a lot more. The couples in the film are in levels of unhappiness that would eventually get Burt and Verona. This is not their fight to escape those because it just cannot happen. Not as fate but the surprise the long term commitment promises. They want to make their effort in a good start and the cross section of the current scenario of marriage is not sad but interesting as it gives intensity of the platform of the happiness we base it upon. “Away We Go” has some great music which initially seemed to be out of place but finds its way as the couples do. Sam Mendes who has his flair and flamboyance in frame picturing the disdain of the clock work life with an appreciation for the shambled beauty it presents, creates a film mellow, cheerful and a cynicism we accept as life itself from the writer couple Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida.