Away From Her
I would’ve watched this eventually just for the presence of Julie Christie, but I stepped it up the to-watch list after hearing a brief summary of the plot on (of all things) Smodcast (never let it be said Kevin Smith doesn’t talk about mature things, lol) ... I figured this could be something like The Notebook. But this movie is much more complicated, difficult, possibly even cruel, than that or just about anything that’s come before it. Right from the start, the quietness, the stillness, the focus on age in this movie, almost reminded me of some Ingmar Bergman movies I’ve seen – Christie almost even has the look of Liv Ullmann at times. It’s too much for me to say anything but it’s a beautiful movie after one watch – everyone is focussing on Julie Christie as the star of the movie but really everyone else in the cast deserves as much attention and I found the movie to be more the story of her husband, played by Gordon Pinsent. Thinking about it now, in fact, it’s quite stunning how Sarah Polley as writer-director handles the POV of both characters, and I think that’s why the movie left me so confused. Christie’s performance is so good because sometimes the movie is seen through Pinsent’s eyes and his view of the situation is at times quite disturbingly paranoid. I left the movie more on this viewing on his side, but at the same time finding it hard to believe what seemed to be the case, that Christie’s disease wasn’t entirely what it at first seemed. One thing’s for sure, this is a stunning debut for Polley which will have people talking more frankly about what is perhaps the most difficult of diseases for many years to come.