Watch Away from Her For Free

To me, this movie is perfection.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Having reluctantly signed his wife into an institution after an Alzheimer's diagnosis, a Canadian college professor has to cope with his wife forgetting who he is in this low key yet potent drama. The film is best known for nabbing Julie Christie a Golden Globe and SAG award for her performance, yet she is curiously a supporting player here for the most part as the film progresses from being about her feeling that she is "beginning to disappear" to her husband coping with her condition. The film has drawn comparisons to the latter 'Still Alice', but whereas the Julianne Moore film is told from her point of view as she loses her mind, this one is really the husband's story. Happily, lead actor Gordon Pinsent is up to the task and delivers an even more layered performance than Christie's - one full of anger, sorrow, bitterness and resentment. The dialogue is also very good too, full of philosophical quips ("it's never too late to become what you may have been"). Focusing on the husband's perspective, 'Away from Her' does not quite deliver the same emotional jolts as 'Still Alice', but if one avoids drawing comparisons, it is a pretty solid film for a first time director (former child actress Sarah Polley). The intermittent flashbacks fit well into the yearning-for-past tapestry of the film too, though it would appear that some out there find them confusing.

My spouse of 61 years has late-stage Alzheimer's. I have been his primary caregiver for eleven years. While the movie correctly demonstrated classic behaviors when symptoms are first obvious, it failed to truthfully follow the effects of phase changes on the patient and her spouse. I could write about my own experience, training, self-analysis, anguish, loneliness, emotional and physical needs, endless coping with behavioral and cognitive dysfunction techniques, our temporary assisted living housing, watching him slip away so slowly it is only obvious in my rear view mirror and watching a once virile man deteriorating with flashes of love in his eyes and occasional smiles, but I won't.I did not want to watch this movie. But I did. For the record it is a love story. I think it should be required viewing as more of us look to a future clouded with uncertainty waiting for a cure for Alzheimer's.

Based on an Alice Munro short story, "Away From Her" is an excellent drama by actress turned director Sarah Polley. The film was produced by Atom Egoyan, Polley's director in both "Exotica" and "The Sweet Hereafter". Aesthetically, "Away From Her" resembles Egoyan's own early work.The plot? Gordon Pinsent plays Grant Anderson, a husband whose wife, Fiona (Julie Christie), begins to suffer from Alzheimer's disease. As her memory loss worsens, Grant moves Fiona into a nursing home. Here Fiona both forgets her own husband, and falls in love with another patient. Grant believes Fiona to be faking her illness as a form of punishment – he cheated on her with several younger women – but Fiona insists otherwise. She praises Grant for his faithfulness, for sticking with a marriage that could have collapsed, adulation which Grant feels is unwarranted.At its best, "Away From Her" touches upon the creepy fragility of the human brain, the fickle nature of memory, love, identity and sanity, and the often arbitrary ways in which relationships, romances and whole subjective personalities are forged and dissolve. All it took for Fiona to forget a lifetime was a minor neural glitch, and all it took for Grant to forget Fiona was a moment of lust. In "Away From Her", whole personal histories are but source code ripe for deletion. "Away From Her" ends with Grant "giving up" Fiona to another man, an act which Polley invites her audience to contemplate. Is this an act of love, of altruism, of selfishness? Is Grant attempting to preserve his idealised memories of Fiona, or simply allowing the memory wiped woman to move on? Actors turned directors often coax special performances out of other actors. In "Away From Her", Polley gets excellent performances out of Pinsent and Christie. The former's a reserved man whose immobility belies deep undercurrents and whose face – forlorn, kind but with wicked eyes - looks like it was torn from an Ingmar Bergman movie. Christie's even better; graceful, beautiful, and called upon to skitter from sanity to confusion to the clear-eyed confidence of a madwoman. Christie herself suffers from a Transient Epileptic Amnesia, a disease which causes recurring episodes of sharp memory loss. "Away From Her" was scored by Jonathan Goldsmith, whose effective score is superseded by a single moment of diegetic sound. This moment occurs when a mentally ill patient periodically strikes piano keys, a haunting sound which powerfully coincides with a particular on-screen revelation. Aesthetically, "Away From Her" is simply directed. We can forgive this; it was Polley's debut. 8.5/10 – Excellent. See the highbrow "Cries and Whispers" and the lowbrow "Remember Sunday".

I read the description of this film, and it sounded like a worthwhile weepy kind of film, I was hoping it would be, and that the actress playing the part would do what was involved well, from debut directing actress Sarah Polley (Dawn of the Dead). Basically the Andersons, Grant (Gordon Pinsent) and Fiona (Golden Globe winning, and Oscar and BAFTA nominated Julie Christie) have been married for forty-four years, and they have been generally happy and loving even with Grant's working as a college professor. Then things change when Fiona develops many lapses of memory, she has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and is admitted into the long term care facility Meadowlake near their home in southern western Ontario. Grant visits very often, and feels sad that she does not know who he is anymore, but also he sees many other families affected by similar cases. He talks a lot to one of the women who also often visits the home, wife of one of the patients, Marian Barque (Moonstruck's Olympia Dukakis) who watches over her semi-comatose husband Aubrey (Michael Murphy). Aubrey and Fiona have struck up a friendship while in the home, but as time goes by Grant is sure that they are becoming much more than just friends, and the situation is worse with her not knowing their past. In the end, Grant and Marian agree that because their other halves can't communicated with them like they used to, they should continue seeing them and let them go on their new paths. Also starring Kristen Thomson as Kristy, Wendy Crewson as Madeleine Montpellier, Alberta Watson as Dr. Fischer and Deanna Dezmari as Veronica. Christie is of course fantastic at being the sympathetic patient unintentionally creating tragedy, but I agree that Pinsent is crucial as the husband who has to sit back and watch the events unfold, it is poignant, it is dignified and it is emotional, a most watchable relationship drama. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published. Julie Christie was number 91 on The 100 Greatest Movie Stars, and she was number 24 on The 50 Greatest British Actresses. Very good!