Sarah Polley’s “Away From Her” simulates the feeling of reading a good Munro story: it’s earned its sentimentality and does not stretch to elicit a response from the audience; it engages you with the characters, revealing their flaws without losing your affection; finally, it leaves you shaken. NPR called it difficult to watch, and that’s no exaggeration – the fear of losing our memory is so severe it’s almost primal.
This film is based upon “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” which you can find in the New Yorker or in Alice Munro’s Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage.
You can listen to NPR talk about the film, read a review of the film, or –
best of all – read the Munro piece yourself.
Each line in the short story has made its way into the script. The movie is accessible even if you haven’t read the story, but I recommend picking it up for a little more back-story (and because it’s quite worth your time). Though there are a large number of flashbacks in the film (who does films about memory better than Canadians?); if you can forgive their stylization, these call attention to some of the most beautiful passages in the story. Polley has also hidden a book list in “Away From Her” – from W.H. Auden’s Letters from Iceland to Alistair Macleod’s No Great Mischief to Michael Ondaatje’s The Cinnamon Peeler.
I saw this film with one parent at each of my sides. They are still just at the brink of what Spalding Gray once called “The Bermuda Triangle of Health,” and I imagine the experience of “Away From Her” was very different for them than it was for me. Their fear of Alzheimer’s may be more immanent, certainly, but I found myself as concerned for them as much as the couple onscreen. How does forgetting affect the people we love? How many stories do we lose in every generation gap?
Munro has a way of ripping her characters’ hearts out, and Gordon Pisent’s portrayal of Grant is particularly shattering. Julie Christie’s “Fiona” is unbeatable, but the main character in this story is absent. It’s a film about a relationship between two people that has ceased to exist. As audience members and readers, we must trust in the author and filmmaker to guide us through a realistic plot. But Munro’s story was not written in a linear fashion, and Polley’s film is true to her style. In the movie, “Marian” says something about life that ends, roughly: “You always think you know what’s going to happen, but you don’t, quite. I mean, you almost know. But you don’t.”
“Away From Her” could be summed up in that statement.
Prepare yourself to walk away from Polley’s film convinced you’re on the brink of losing your mind. This is the first step to the story entering your veins. My mother has identified herself as one step away from Fiona – in response, my little sister said confidently, “Don’t worry, Mom. By tomorrow you probably won’t remember the movie anyway.”
All right, you’ve been sufficiently warned. Please see this film. I’d call it “memorable,” if there weren’t so much implicit irony.