User Reviews

Julie Christie's combination of talent, beauty and brains has enthralled me over four decades. Nearly a decade ago, her Oscar nominated performance in "Afterglow" established that she was not a spent force while playing a gracefully aging wife of a handyman in the US. One thought that would be her best turn at geriatric impersonations.

Less than a decade later, Christie comes up with an even better performance of a woman coping with Alzheimer's disease in a debut directorial effort "Away from Her" of Canadian actress Sarah Polley. I saw the film today at the ongoing International Film Festival of Kerala, India, where Ms Christie, serving on the jury for the competition section, introduced her film thus: "It is immaterial whether you are rich or poor--we cannot predict what can happen to us. Enjoy the film with this thought." Ms Christie probably put in her best effort because the young director considers Ms Christie to be her "adoptive" mother, having worked together on three significant movie projects in five years. The film's subject brings memories of two similar films: Pierre Granier-Deferre' film "Le Chat" that won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for both Jean Gabin and Simone Signoret in 1971 and Paul Mazursky's "Harry and Tonto" which won an Oscar for the lead actor Art Carney in 1974. This performance of Julie Christie ranks alongside those winners.

Today geriatric care is a growing problem. This film is a sensitive look at parting of married couples when one of them needs institutional care. Ms Polley's choice of the actor Gordon Pinsent is an intelligent one as the film relies on his narration and Mr Pinsent's deep voice provides the right measure of gravitas. Olympia Dukakis is another fine actor playing a lady who has "quit quitting". So is Michael Murphy doing a lengthy role without saying a word.

The strengths of the film are the subject, the direction, the performances and the seamless editing by the director's spouse. It is not a film that will attract young audiences who are insensitive. Yet the film has a evocative scene where a young teenager with several parts of her body pierced by rings is totally amazed by the devotion of the aging husband for his wife. So in a way the film reaches out to different age groups. Though it talks about sex, it can be safe family viewing material.

Chances are that most viewers will love the film if they are interested in films that are different from "the American films that get shown in multiplexes" to quote a character in the film. More importantly this film advertises the problem of Alzheimer's disease eloquently and artistically. It prepares you for future shocks.

I remember the last time I saw my mother. I sat on the end of her bed, strumming guitar, and singing a song she used to sing to us as children. I hoped she might remember it. She would probably not, however, recognise her son. Or even speak. She had Alzheimer's.

After self-righteous 'disease of the week' movies such as Iris, it is maybe hard to imagine a riveting, nuanced love story of depth and imagination, one centred on loss of memory, but Away From Her succeeds in spades.

Fiona (Julie Christie) has been married to Grant for 44 years. They have reached a stage of lifetime love based on deep knowledge of each other and acceptance of past misdemeanours. Then Fiona's memory starts to fail. As her Alzheimer's begins to need 24hr care, she checks in to Meadowlake residential centre. There she not only forgets who her husband is, but develops an affection for another patient – an affection that holds all the tenderness she used to share with her (now onlooking) husband.

Says Producer Simone Urdl, "The role of Alzheimer's in the film is a metaphor for how memory plays out in a long term relationship: what we chose to remember, what we choose to forget." And our ability to recall things, as Oscar Wilde pointed out, is highly selective.

Secure in the knowledge that he has given his wife many years of happiness, Grant glosses over his unfaithfulness in their younger days. But Fiona's early memories stay longer, and come back to haunt him. To bring his wife joy now, he is driven to encourage her towards that which gives him most pain.

Away From Her takes us from frozen, luminescent mise-en-scene of the couple's secure existence in snow-drenched, rural Canada, to the hand-held cameras and uncertainty that hits in Meadowlake. Excerpts from Auden's Letters From Iceland are sprinkled into the script like shards of crystalline beauty. Julie Christie, for whom the lead role was written, exudes dynamic good looks and the vibrancy of a young woman, bathed in such warmth and passion of years. When she asks Grant to make love to her before leaving, there is an urgency and scintillating sexiness about her.

Away From Her sparkles as we watch Grant walk his emotional tight-rope. The movie is made with such surety that it comes as a shock to realise the director is a first time filmmaker in her twenties. Sarah Polley evokes Bergman, as she too touches "wordless secrets only the cinema can discover." This talented young woman is highly selective in her acting roles and now, behind the camera, impresses with her insight and intelligence.

My last conversation with my mother, before she was institutionalised, or I even realised what was happening, was a long distance phone call. After chatting happily for five minutes, she said, quite chirpily and very politely, "What's your name again?" Memory is not always a two-way process. Nor objective. But, like this film, it can be mesmerising, heart-wrenching, and a remarkably intimate vision.

I'm not usually one to watch films dealing with diseases of any type – believing them to be maudlin, manipulative and even somewhat morbid – much less mental illness, but since this is expected to earn Julie Christie another Oscar (which would probably make it the longest gap between the first and second win), I decided to check it out in time for the upcoming awards ceremony.

Christie's character has been struck with the debilitating Alzheimer's Disease but, thankfully, she – or, more precisely, writer-director Polley (a likable actress in her own right, though not appearing here herself) – doesn't bemoan her fate; rather, she accepts it with grace and even treats the condition with mild humor (which is the way these things should be approached but, I guess, one has to really be going through them himself to really know). Incidentally, I find extremely silly and unwarranted the recent warning by some hysterical group when, in her acceptance speech at the SAG awards, Christie joked that if she forgot the name of anyone it's because she was still in character!

The film is undeniably moving as we see the aging heroine degenerating to the point that she can't even recognize her own devoted husband (Gordon Pinsent) and even attaches herself to a fellow patient (Michael Murphy) at the clinic to which she's eventually admitted. Ironically, considering the accolades showered upon Christie, I feel that it's Pinsent who's the real protagonist here: quietly despairing yet brave in coping with the heartbreaking situation (unsurprisingly, he strikes up a friendship with Murphy's own wife – played by Olympia Dukakis). On the other hand, the viewpoint of the younger generation (obligatory in our zealously-PC world) is present here – though in a somewhat idealistic manner, if you ask me – via a teenager who chats with Pinsent during one of his visits to the clinic (and, in a deleted sequence, is revealed to be a neighbor of Dukakis and occasionally takes care of Murphy for her).

Actually, this isn't the kind of film one would expect an emerging young director to make – particularly since it has aspirations of being a Bergman-like chamber drama which, while fairly compelling and austere (aided with respect to the latter by the snowy Canadian setting), clearly lacks the necessary depth which a master craftsman would otherwise bring to such material.

Sarah Polley, still well under thirty, has taken one of my favourite Alice Monroe's stories and created magic with the script, casting and production of a remarkable and memorable film.

The effect is profound. You are watching actors at the peak of their craft, Julie Christie (playing Fiona Anderson), Gordon Pinsent (Grant Anderson) and Olympia Dukakis (Marian) and there is never a false move.

But beware, this is a movie for grown-ups and is reminiscent in some ways of "The Dead". Do we ever really know someone even though we have lived and breathed their air for over forty years? The tragedy and sometimes humour of Alzheimer's Disease is portrayed beautifully. The occasional lucid moments offering hope, only to be followed, often quickly, by the bafflement of the dementia.

But to focus solely on the still breathtakingly beautiful Julie and her brilliance in depicting a woman in the throes of the disease is to diminish the film as it is not only about that. It is about the secrets of the marriage, the incarceration of a loved one in a home, the despair and sometimes desperation of the spouse left operating in the outside 'real' world, the sometimes outrageous bondings of the inhabitants of the group home and the compromises reached by all.

There is much symbolism in the movie (the snow was particularly meaningful) and many wonderful, almost unnoticeable 'sidebits' - Olympia trying to pass off a store bought cookie as home-made for one - that bring this movie to wonderful heights. The attention to detail is amazing. I've visited these homes and this was real, down to the eccentric and often comically expletive-laden talk from the elderly inhabitants. Polley shows remarkable restraint in just allowing one of these eccentricities to run through the film when it might have been tempting to lay it on a little more thickly.

Though never sentimental and often humorous, the world through Grant's eyes is vividly portrayed and his anguish is palpable as he witnesses both the disintegration and re-invention of his beloved Fiona.

A heart-breaking, powerful and moving story brought beautifully to the screen. Bravo to all concerned. Oscar worthy.

The fact that Fiona - the "her" from the title - is played by Julie Christie makes the painful journey crystal clear. Julie Christie is a wonder. She manages for us,without sentimentality but with an intelligence that makes the point of the story profoundly human, to get close to the illness with sadness yes but without fear. Alzheimer's disease is like a dark tunnel that the afflicted enter without wanting to, without being able to avoid it. I've wondered what was like to be aware of it, I mean, to know that sooner rather than later you will forget everything and everyone. Sarah Polley, the director, works a little miracle here giving us Julie Christie to answer that question. I felt enormously close to Fiona's husband - a wonderful performance by Gordon Pinsent - and came out of the experience uplifted rather than depressed.

When it comes to "Away from Her," the overused, abused adjective cannot be avoided: it is a great film.

Sarah Polley's film grips, holds, moves, thrills; you will think and talk about it, remember the story and the characters indefinitely - which could well serve as a dictionary definition of "great film." All this from a 27-year-old first-time director!

You will see advertising and hear talk about "the one with Julie Christie having Alzheimer's," but that describes "Away from Her" no better than saying "Hamlet" is about a man who cannot make up his mind. Yes, Fiona, Christie's character, is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's, but the actress - as beautiful as ever and in her greatest role here - creates a complex, full figure, with good moments and bad ones, with intelligence, warmth, carrying regrets and hurts with grace. The outstanding Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent is Grant, Fiona's loving husband for long, rich decades, albeit with their share of problems.

As the story unfolds, Grant and Fiona face the obvious, the inevitable, but for the audience, there is nothing obvious or inevitable about the way things happen. Polley's writing is Stoppardian in its complexity and brilliance - there is nothing predigested and Hollywoodish here, only life and people as infinitely complex as the human brain. Even as it deteriorates, the brain - and the film about this tragic process - retains its surprises and wonders, and to the very last scene of "Away from Her," you cannot sit back and assume you know what will happen. You don't; the film's unpredictability is one of its great assets.

Add to Polley's script (based on Alice Munro's "The Bear Came Over the Mountain") and direction, to Christie's and Pinsent's magnificent individual and ensemble acting, a cast to treasure. Olympia Dukakis and Michael Murphy play a couple whose lives unexpectedly intertwine with Grant and Fiona's. Kristen Thomson steals whole scenes from the principals as the head nurse at the institution where Fiona is placed; warm, supportive, nurturing and altogether wonderful, the nurse has one quick exchange in which she shows another side and another attitude - and this slight "glitch" makes the character even more real and sympathetic.

"Away from Her" is not a tragedy, it's a drama, which moves and uplifts. It includes charming and funny moments, but even the humor has depth. In one scene, as she is watching TV news from Iraq, Alzheimer's patient Fiona exclaims: "How could they forget Vietnam?!"

A loving husband can do little except watch his wife spiral away, as she succumbs to dementia in an all too familiar story portrayed with sensitivity and respect.

A couple washes up after dinner. He washes while she dries. They savour the memory of the delicious dinner they just shared. They are smiling and in love after forty-four years together. In a moment of silence, he casually hands her the frying pan he has just cleaned. She dries it with her towel, walks to the freezer and puts it inside. She exits the room as if nothing out of the ordinary has just happened. All he can do is watch, if his intentions are to be sensitive. This is the context in which we are introduced to Grant and Fiona (Gordon Pinsett and Julie Christie) in the first feature film adapted and directed by Canadian actress Sarah Polley, AWAY FROM HER. Polley brings unapologetic honesty and sympathy to the lives of these two characters. After a lifetime together, they will be torn apart by Alzheimer's. Neither can do anything to stop it. He can only watch her mind disappear while she tries to enjoy the undetermined lucid time she has left. It is Polley's delicate and respectful hand that guides the viewer to see past the surface of misplaced kitchen apparel and see the longing for tenderness that is had between as it lingers longer than fading memories.

Memory comes in and out in AWAY FROM HER. With the image often filling with white and veering on blurry like a blinding snowstorm, Polley sets the tone from the start. Memory is a hazy concept. Alzheimer's is a cruel game that has Fiona having difficulty maintaining her short-term memory, like why she left the house or common words, while some of the most painful memories in her life seem like they will never be forgotten. Her story unfolds as she decides to admit herself to a retirement facility so that her husband needn't be responsible for her. This particular "home" enforces a policy where new residents are not allowed to have any contact with the loved ones they left behind for the first thirty days after they are admitted. When Grant is finally able to return to the residence, it isn't clear whether Fiona even recognizes him and worse yet, she has found comfort in the company of another man (Michael Murphy). As painful as this reality is, Polley cuts away to another time and place throughout this build, allowing us a glimpse into where Grant will end up as a result of all this change. As a result, the film feels interrupted. It is one of few mistakes made by this novice filmmaker but fortunately not one that makes the film any less painful.

Polley directs three beautifully nuanced performances from her leads. As Grant, Pinsett is bewildered, stubborn and hopeful depending on the moment. Despite all of his frustration, he is constantly searching for understanding and resolve for the memories even he has difficulty letting go of. Olympia Dukakis joins the cast as Marian, the wife of Aubrey, the man Fiona befriends in the residence. She is a tough woman, brass because she has to be. For Grant, she represents what he could have become had it been decided that he would care for his wife himself. Her life is one that was surrendered to supporting her husband through his illness, forcing personal happiness to be removed as a possibility. Naturally, given the nature of the part, it is Christie that pulls the viewer deep into a mind that is falling away. In one scene, Grant brings her home for a day. She marvels at how it was kept so well after all this time. Though the home she is seeing was her own for over twenty years, she looks on it as if it belonged to someone else. The way her eyes take in the surroundings, an environment that she should know intimately, suggests a sense of attachment intrinsically linked with a saddened detachment. She should know this place, these things, and one some level she does. She does not understand why she should feel a sense of familiarity, just that it is so. It is as though memories flood back to her but they aren't her own.

AWAY FROM HER is a fantastic first film from a talented Canadian actress with great promise as both a perceptive writer and skilled director. It is also a lesson in patience and learning to let go. Not for the viewer but for those on screen. Grant must always exercise restraint while allowing the love of his life to find solace in another man. After all, what matters most is that she be at peace. As big a task as this is, Fiona must do even more. She must accept that the life she knew is behind her and that the one ahead of her is new, necessary and one that might fade away from her as quickly as it happens to her.

This is a story about Alzheimer's Disease (AD), its effect on those who suffer from it, and, principally, the difficulties that it poses for relatives who see their loved one decay mentally before death. Julie Christie plays Fiona, a woman whose dementia progresses rather rapidly. Her husband, Grant, is dejected with their predicament as Fiona is moved to a specialized facility and within it between wards dealing with patients with differing levels of impairment.

The depiction of dementia through the character of Fiona and other patients around her is good but not excellent. From my, avowedly limited and not professional, experience with AD-afflicted close and distant relatives, numerous visits to a number of nursing homes -- from the fancy to the abject -- and long hours roaming the often depressing corridors of the wards observing the behavior of old folks whose minds had gone potty, I believe I picked inaccuracies in the behavior of Fiona and her fellow seniors that threw me off. It is not uncommon at the early stages of AD to think that the person may be pretending. Grant thinks that way too at first. I had to agree with him. I had trouble accepting an AD sufferer at the advanced stage of not recognizing a loved one of more than forty years still displaying a keen short-term memory capacity. Could it be that Fiona what exacting some kind of revenge on Grant past dalliances?

The depiction of nursing homes and the commentary about AD is accurate. Sarah Polley has clearly spent time visiting such places. From what I understand, she had to deal with her own mother's dementia for about five years. She has first hand experience. The only thing missing in the film, is the sometimes lackadaisical attention by bored staff you see in real life. But, who knows, Canadian senior care may be a lot better.

The story has an important additional element in the form of Marian, played superbly by Olivia Dukakis, whose husband has advanced AD. She illustrates the wrenching decisions that families face. Send the demented relative to an expensive nursing home and go broke doing so or keep the patient at home and live progressively more hellish days. That aspect of the disease jives perfectly with the shared experience of Grant and Marian as they deal with spouses that become unable to reciprocate the love they are given.

The patients at the nursing home are actors. Despite their best efforts, I found the depictions short of perfect. It is really difficult to ape exactly the tentative and struggling moves of a frail body or the glazed eyes of a lost soul who no longer can comprehend the world.

The aforementioned criticisms should be considered minor. Sarah Polley's first venture as a director shows she has what it takes. That is helped by a very good adaptation to the screen of Alice Munro's short story. Overall the casting is excellent.

Funded by the Ontario province at a cost short of C$5M and shot in that province. Don't miss it.

Sarah Polley's directorial debut is an impressive one. Mostly, she was successful in picking great actors. Grant Anderson (Gordon Pinsent) is suffering as his wife Fiona (Julie Christie) slowly loses her memories. She has Alzheimer's disease and gets placed in a long term care facility.

The whole movie takes place on the face of Gordon Pinsent. His pain is evident every time she can't remember him. It is truly heartbreaking. Julie Christie delivers one of her greatest performances. She doesn't overact. The confusion isn't theatrical which could so easily taken as comical. It is a quiet suffering on the scraggly old face of Pinsent. The one out of step moment is the passing old man who comments that Grant's heart is breaking into a thousand pieces. It's too obvious and too on the nose.

There is something about veteran actors taking all their life experiences and putting it on the screen. It's something that can't be faked. And it can't be done with younger actors. We saw a man breaking right in front of us on the screen.

This is one of the best dramas I have seen. And it is a testament to the director (she isn't only beautiful and a good actress, she also has a real good sense and taste for a story) and of course the actors. With the weight of the actors and the way they play their roles, you get entirely sucked into the movie. Which of course is a good thing. You can't call this entertainment on the other hand, if you see the heavy subject on hand here.

But with a movie like that you should be expecting it to be a heavy drama. I'm not going to go into details of the story, hoping for you to go into this, with as little information as possible, so you are surprised by a few things (and see them as the main characters and not know them before-hand). It plays to your emotions and you'd have to have a heart of stone not to be touched at some point in/during the movie. I can only recommend this ...

The film is amazing. A good adaptation of Alice Munroe text, admirable performances, wise support for reflection about dementia and Alzheimer disease especially. But it is the film of Julie Christie. In the magnificent manner. Isaw her impecable acting. And each of her roles becomes more clear. Her grace of performance, science to explore , in right manner, the nuances of character, the gentle way to give the perfect sparkle to each nuance. A beautiful film. And the unique Julie Christie.

This film feels like actress Sarah Polley saw The Notebook and said to herself, "I could make a better movie than that." And that's what she did. Based on an Alice Munro short story, this follows an elderly man, Grant (Gordon Pinsent), whose wife, Fiona (Julie Christie) is suffering from Alzheimer's. He realizes that he cannot care for her alone, so they decide together that she must enter a nursing home. The establishment they choose has a policy that new residents cannot have visitors for a whole month (it helps both the patients and the staff cope with the change). When Gordon is finally allowed to visit, he finds his wife has forgotten him and has become involved emotionally with another man (Michael Murphy). It sounds heartbreaking, and it is, but the film isn't a tragedy. It's a love story, one of the most beautiful I've seen in a long while. It's incredibly observant about human life, and it mostly remains very subtle. Sarah Polley is, if you don't recognize the name, the girl from Atom Egoyan's films The Sweet Hereafter and Exotica. Now 28, she directs with more confidence than any of the directors nominated for Best Picture this past year. She stumbles a few times, especially early on when establishing Christie's disease, but never fatally. The acting is probably the main draw. If you're a Christie fan, don't miss this. However, Gordon Pinsent does the real heavy lifting. He's a mostly unknown character actor (a lot of television, stage, and, if you see the film it won't surprise you, voice acting), but for this he deserves to be remembered for a very long time. What a fantastic performance he gives. Also great are Olympia Dukakis (as Murphy's wife) and Kristen Thomson (as a nurse sympathetic to Grant's pain). As an Altman fanatic, I love Micheal Murphy. Unfortunately he is given almost nothing to do. Too bad this was released too early for the Academy Awards. Christie could have easily gotten in as the aging legend, and at the very least it would have gotten more people to go see it. If you can't catch it now, keep an eye out for the DVD.

It is very rare to see a film with a novel plot. Something to say you have never seen a film like this before. There have been films where someone suffers from Alzheimer's but a film where the sufferer strikes up a relationship with someone else in a home and forgetting about her husband. That is different.

Gordon Pinsent gives a quiet, dignified but enthralling performance as Grant, the retired University Professor who travels each day to visit his wife at a care home but feels like a voyeur as Fiona (Julie Christie) gives her affection to wheelchair bound and mute Aubrey (Michael Murphy).

Christie's Fiona is glamorous, used to a fine life, skis cross country, wears nice clothes. She realises that she needs car whereas Grant is reluctant. The important plot point is that care home has a policy where the spouse cannot see patient for 30 days after admission.

This worsens the situation for Fiona and Grant as after 30 days she has forgotten about him and got close to Aubrey. The film deals with Grant facing up to this apparent rejection, is it punishment for past indiscretions he is left wondering.

The film tries to deal with a sensitive subject as well it can. Powerful but subtle acting from Pinsent anchors this film with his Canadian lilt. Christie conveys her character's once glamorous life but you get the feeling that she still looks a little too glam even after a few months at the care home. However she catches the odd moment of confusion and switch to coherence and incoherence that Alzheimer's sufferers have very well.

It is a poignant and touching film. We are left with a scene where for a moment Fiona recognises Grant but we know that this is temporary.

Everything about Julie Christie is different, it always was. So, there shouldn't come as a big surprise that she has recruited her age as a great allied. To say that she glows and that she's as beautiful as ever seems idiotic and banal, but the fact is that she glows and that she's as beautiful as ever. Then, as an actress, she continues to grow and to surprise us. The idea of losing one's memory its a devastating blow and to see that awareness in Julie Christie's face made it doubly so. I understand better the illness I feel nearer to its sufferers. It is extraordinary that for people of my generation - I was born in 1958 - Julie Christie was a sort of symbol. To see the newer generations fall in love with her and not only in her old movies but in her new ones, it's the most marvelous reassuring feeling in the world.

Sarah Polley is under 30 and "Away From Her" is a genius project for any age of filmmaker. Wow. Just amazed at the sensitivity of the direction and the spectacular performances.

Julie Christie is so adept at convincing her audience, there wasn't a dry eye at our screening.

Gordon Pinsent and Olymia Dukakis were equally as gripping in this quiet, realistic tale.

If it doesn't get an Oscar for somebody - there is REALLY something wrong with the distribution and/or with AMPAS.

come along everyone !

Give Sarah your votes.

Julie Christie provides a brilliant performance as Fiona Anderson, a mature attractive woman with Alzheimer's disease. As the disease progresses, her loving husband Grant Anderson (played brilliantly by Gordon Pinsent) puts her away in a nursing home where she is cared for round the clock. They have to spend the first month away from each other. When he does visit her, he is surprised to see her with Aubrey Park, a wheelchair bound man (played great by Michael Murphy). Despite a speechless performance, his facial expressions can say more than words could ever say. Anyway, Olympia Dukakis plays Aubrey's long-suffering wife, Marian. She does a great job in playing the role. Anyway, Grant visits his wife more than anybody else visits the home. While he must adjust to a life without her, it is painfully clear that she was his entire world. They were a childless couple of 44 years together. They lived in a beautiful home by the lake. I think Gordon Pinsent deserved equal recognition for his performance. Director and screenwriter, Sarah Polley weaves a tale of love and life in a realistic style. She is an up and coming director to watch out for. She brings and weaves a first rate cast with a realistic story.

I didn't bother to read any of the positive remarks about this movie because what the harshest critics have to say about its flawed depiction of the disease process is essentially correct and constitutes the film's most glaring flaw. It presents a woefully inadequate picture of Alzheimer's Disease, as anyone who has had to deal with it personally can well attest. I have read, however, that attachments between demented patients do occur and also that the disease brings out different aspects of the victim's personality, as one might expect -- people tending to anger in their normal lives become even more bitter and angry once they become afflicted. Similarly, naturally flirtatious or promiscuous people tend to exhibit disturbing exaggerations of that behavior, therefore, the story isn't entirely implausible, just unlikely. It is a nice movie when appreciated on its merits, alone. The main problem is that the writer and director used the disease merely as a prop to develop the plot, which didn't reflect reality convincingly.

Others have alluded to the incontinence, one of the most dehumanizing aspects of the disease, or the mental confusion and the increasing inability to speak sensibly. Another aspect is so-called short-term memory loss and its immediate effects. For example, I remember my father, a highly intelligent and purposeful man before he was diagnosed with the disease, sitting at the dinner table with his arms on his lap and banging them on the underside of the table because he forgot the table was there and he was trying to use his arms to make a gesture. He did this over and over again, each time saying, "Ouch!" then immediately forgetting that he'd just hurt himself and doing the exact same thing yet another time. It seemed to me that his arms were taking a real bruising but nothing much could be done about it. That was following the first round of serious deterioration in his mental faculties, when he seemed to be in good humor and had not yet turned bitter and angry and paranoid or become incontinent and far more confused. Just a year later, after more serious deterioration, he was dashing out of the house and running around my parents' wealthy neighborhood with his clothes put on wrong, scaring people he came across and being picked up and brought home by the police. The combination of not knowing what they are doing while knowing just enough to be both very slippery and a real danger to themselves is a very disturbing aspect of the disease. Only the wealthiest families like the Reagans can afford to keep the patient at home and hire expensive, live-in care. Most people are forced to sell the patient's home in order to afford the less-expensive care facility. Alzheimer's Disease is a terrible way to die, perhaps worse than cancer because it goes on for so long and just gets worse and worse. And these facilities, in concert with the doctors, treat the patients with powerful, potentially deleterious drugs in order to keep them under control, anxious to get them to the final stages more quickly where they are easier to manage and less likely to jump up and head for the door. In fact, the institutional staff obviously prefers them when they are further along, that is, in a wheelchair that can be parked, facing the wall for hours at a time. The loved ones of certain patients will bribe the staff members to give special (read minimal) attention to their afflicted relatives, while less fortunate patients are more or less ignored. The movie didn't adequately deal with this seamy reality, but then again, movies seldom do deal with death in a truly realistic and convincing manner. They tend to romanticize it or soft pedal it, which is what was done here.

Greetings again from the darkness. Some of the most powerful moments in film are often very quiet and that is in full display in multi-talented Sarah Polley's fantastic first feature film as a director.

The film centers around the latter days of the 44 year marriage of Grant and Fiona and their struggles with the most cruel of all diseases, Alzheimers. Grant, played excruciatingly well by Gordon Pinsent, tries so hard to do the right thing ... even at the expense of his own happiness. Fiona, in what must be an Oscar-nominated performance by Julie Christie, ironically is the one to realize that she needs to be put into a home.

There are so many touching, intimate, delicate scenes and subtle performances by the two leads that the film is often difficult to watch. Watching emotional suffering by two apparently decent people is no treat. What is a treat is the expert film-making by Ms. Polley. She has an eye and feel for the story and the layers which add depth to the experience.

The most thought-provoking part of the film is the idea that Alzhemiers and real life have some similarities as we often choose to "forget" the rotten points in a long term relationship, while Alzhemiers does the choosing for the person and is not always so forgiving.

Must also mention Olympia Dukakis in one of her most grounded roles of all time. She seems to understand that her character is to make a point, not be the central focus. Overall, a tremendous film with outstanding performances which should gather attention for acting, writing and directing.

Forget 66year old Julie Christie's Breck Hair and young woman figure; ignore her still luminous blue eyes and creamy, so-what creased face. The real star here is Alzheimer's Disease, the thief slowly stealing the heart from a 44 year marriage. Christie's Fiona must go to a nursing home before her disease "progresses." Gordon Pinsent's former college professor Grant reluctantly lets her go.

It's not exactly One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in there, but romance does evolve, such as Fiona's with Michael Murphy's Aubrey (art nouveau's Beardsley I'd guess as the artistic allusion). What's a husband to do? In the best Bergman tradition, young director/actress Sarah Polley moves the plot and camera slowly, peppering it with nuanced twists that satisfy our dramatic interests but leave plenty of room for the meaning-of–life philosophies.

Polley and her source, Alice Munro, succeeds with the thesis that adults need to be given freedom to be who they are at the place they are in their lives. Life for Fiona begins again with tending to Aubrey while Grant stews thinking she may be paying him back for his affairs with students. Maybe so, but Christie's acting is so good (Oscar –worthy) that she clearly seems to be in the thrall of Alzheimer's yet lucid enough to remember those indiscretions. Such is the mercurial nature of the disease that long-term memory may linger while-short term is a victim.

K. D. Lang singing Neil Young's Helpless is an inspired touch for the denouement of this beautiful romance. I don't think there could be a better dramatic introduction to the challenges of Alzheimer's than Away From Her.

I picked up this movie at a video store liquidation sale. The only reason I had any interest was because I wanted to see if Julie Christie is still hot, and I mistook director "Sarah Polley" for another director "Sally Potter" (whose films I don't really like, so I don't know why I even bothered to begin with).

When you open the DVD, a leaflet & prepaid postage envelope falls out, hitting you up for donations to the Alzheimer's Association. When you pop in the DVD, it starts with a public service announcement for the Alzheimer's Association's "OPEN" campaign, explained as: "we need to OPEN our hearts... and wallets" (I'm not making this up!) Everything seemed to indicate that this would be a big fundraising propaganda film with a predictable Hallmark storyline by a mediocre director, but I still persevered because I wanted to see if Julie Christie was hot.

WOW. In the first 10 minutes, all my preconceptions disappeared. Let me say that this is not a film about Alzheimer's. Sure, it centers around Alzheimer's, the same way "Amadeus" centers around Mozart. But much like "Amadeus", the story and themes of "Away From Her" go far beyond the situational setup, delving deep into the complex world of psychology, emotions and even spirituality. I suppose you can view it as a film about Alzheimer's, but I saw a deeper metaphor about honesty with one's own feelings--something which few of us truly confront. We all claim to know what "everlasting love" is, "in sickness & in health", blah blah blah, but the staggering divorce rates should indicate that people rarely have a grasp of the concept. This film is a powerful reminder of what true love is & what it isn't.

Furthermore, I was immediately impressed with (whom I thought was) Sally Potter's directing; I kept saying to myself, wow, she sure has come a long way! It wasn't until I watched the deleted scenes commentary that I recognized the voice... "Oh jeez, Sarah Polley, the girl in 'Don't Come Knocking'... she directed this?!?" Big thumbs up for the excellent, artistic & graceful directing style of this movie. If this is Sarah Polley's debut, I can't wait to see what she can follow up with.

So my advice to you is: check out this film. If you enjoy slow-paced, artistic films with powerful messages, like the films of Wim Wenders (including "Don't Come Knocking" which Sarah Polley acted in) or maybe some recent Japanese masterpieces like "Departures" or even the classic Kurosawa works like "Ikiru", you'll really enjoy this movie.

Regarding Alzheimers, I learned a lot but never felt like I was being hit over the head with an afterschool special, nor did the film try to 'guilt' me into donating money to any nameless research labs (which I never do because I'm a selfish basdit who doesn't trust anyone, much less scientists who inject beagles & bunnies with horrific diseases--having worked at a research lab for 3 traumatic months like I did). In fact, if anything, the film takes a somewhat skeptical approach toward organized Alzheimer's institutions. The film's message, it seems, is to learn about the disease so you can better care for & understand victims yourself, not just dump them on the doorstep of others who make a lucrative business out of it.

So in conclusion, let me just return to the most important point of this lengthy review and say, yes, Julie Christie is definitely still hot.