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Trailer for "Away From Her"

The late Susan Sontag famously warned us against the use of illness as a metaphor. At some points, Sarah Polley’s debut directorial effort, Away From Her, seems to be edging toward a contemplation of Alzheimer’s as a symbolic phenomenon, but it never really abandons the common, difficult and often frightening human dimensions of this disease.

In the film, Grant and Fiona Anderson (Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie) have been married for forty-four years when she is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Polley, who also wrote Away From Her, lets this situation resonate with multiple possible meanings and implications, but she has rendered the couple’s predicament in real enough terms. Many of the film’s observations and details are likely to seem real enough to people with direct and indirect experience of illness, and the frequently limited assistance available from the helping professions and institutional environments. Away From Her is more charged, and sometimes softened, with emotion than The Bear Came Over the Mountain, the short story by Alice Munro that Polley adapted for her screenplay, but it doesn’t rely upon a lyrical transcendence in its treatment of the material.

When Fiona’s encroaching debility becomes more obvious, she faces the need to move to a nursing home with more resolve than her erudite and charming mate, a retired literature professor. The longstanding but delicate balance of tension and affection that has sustained this marriage for so long is gradually revealed as this balance is radically transformed.

When Grant anxiously objects that he didn’t really like the home they visited, Fiona gently replies, “I don’t think we should be looking for something we like…” but rather “…a little bit of grace.”

Grant’s fear of losing Fiona, literally and figuratively, seems to be realized when she becomes attached to Aubrey, another resident at the facility (Michael Murphy in a largely thankless role), and seems to lose all sense of intimate connection to her husband. The crux of the movie, which primarily reflects Grant’s reactions and feelings, involves his confused, resentful, but persistent efforts to reach an accommodation with their changing fates. Eventually, these involve Aubrey’s bluntly practical wife (Olympia Dukakis giving a fine, clear-edged and wisely modulated performance).

Polley’s adaptation treats Grant less skeptically than did Munro’s story, which, if memory serves, had a current of feminist disapproval. This shows up in the film in a couple of scenes, particularly in one that involves Grant in a conversation with one of his wife’s nurses. But Polley is more sympathetic to Grant’s plight and responses.

She has done a creditable job of reworking the story. Her direction is mostly sure, as well as fluid, and it’s almost never heavy-handed with what is difficult content. If it might have benefitted from more of Munro’s tough-mindedness, it achieves a sad, rueful and delicate appeal.

It also should remind us what a sure-footed but subtle and occasionally transcendent actress Christie is. Only rarely encountered in films in recent years, her work here is an asset of great value as she conveys Fiona’s adjusting personality and moods with an acute perceptiveness.

Pinsent, the veteran Canadian star (The Rowdy Man), had to assume responsibility for much of the film’s action, and his work is sturdy and affecting. Grant’s charm, intelligence and weakness come through, as does his devotion to his wife.

Away From Her is really about their individual and mutual searches for the grace that Fiona spoke of to Grant.