Touching, understated tale of a couple that has to deal with Alzheimer’s disease.
Grant and Fiona have been married for over four decades. They have a good life together, living in a small but comfortable house by a lake. Most importantly, the love each other. But then, they have to face the fact that Fiona is developing Alzheimer’s disease. They decide she should live in a home – for her own safety. Alzheimer’s is not like any other disease, though. Fiona starts to forget their history, and even Grant himself. “I think I may be beginning to disappear,” she says.
And suddenly, Grant is not only a stranger, but even an intruder in his own wife’s life. He has to decide if he will make the biggest sacrifice of all for the woman he loves.
Away from her is a small movie about big emotions. It’s about the struggle with Alzheimer’s, about losing oneself, and losing the person you love without being able to do anything about it. Director Sarah Polley foregoes any melodramatics, and yet, the despair and helplessness is tangible in every scene.
It touches on the theme that so much of a person’s character is made up of their memory. Fiona is not just losing her memory, she is actually losing herself. Her new world is confusing, and there are no signs that tell her what to do and where to go. She is desperately seeking something that makes sense, and finds it in an unexpected place.
At the same time, Grant is almost in a state of grief. He has lost the Fiona he has spent his life with. But at the same time, a different Fiona is still there. How is he supposed to deal with that? And there’s still that feeling that maybe Fiona is punishing him by forgetting – an emotion that alternates with nascent hope.
Both Gordon Pinsent and Oscar-nominated Julie Christie play their roles with understated perfection. Their story almost seems to be a reverse relationship. They start out as intimate as a couple can be and become strangers. They are far apart in the end – even though Grant once vowed he never wanted to be “away from her.”
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