(2006)
4
Perry Seibert
Away From Her, Sarah Polley's deliberately paced, poignantly observed tale of how Alzheimer's disease affects a long-married couple, is filled to overflowing with remarkable acting. This is a quiet film that deals with very large emotions, but plays them very small. As Grant, Gordon Pinsent carries the hefty emotional weight of the film. The devotion he feels for his wife, combined with the anger he feels over her disease, and the guilt he has accumulated for his occasionally less than stellar behavior as a husband are all communicated in subtle shifts of his face over the course of the movie. It is a haunting performance that is both detailed and deceptively natural. By the end of the film, the audience knows him, warts and all, as well as his wife did. Julie Christie plays the wife, and her performance is a technical marvel. She has just a little bit of time in the beginning of the movie for us to understand why this woman is so loved by Grant, and then she must slowly slip into varying levels of dementia. There are no screaming fits, or crying jags. She just slowly and steadily fails to recognize common things, until those things include her husband and her love for him. Christie is always referred to as a beauty, and while this is most certainly still the case, Away From Her reminds anyone who had forgotten that she is a formidable actress. The film's overwhelmingly emotional ending sneaks up on the viewer because of the director's trust in her actors and the material. Great actors must be empathetic, and Sarah Polley, though still a young woman, was already one of the best actresses of her generation when she made this movie. Away From Her, Polley's directorial debut, exhibits patience and empathy that indicate a remarkable career behind the camera may be in store for her should she wish to follow that muse.
Away From Her on AllMovie
Away From Her (2006)
