Away From Her

I admit it was a long time after the release of “Away From Her” that I watched it.  I finished a particularly tricky project so feeling very accomplished and brave one July afternoon I took advantage of the moment and put in a screener I had laying around.

“Hey, why did you wait to see in?” you ask, well if the Chapter-O-Life the characters portrayed in this movie were a blanket it would be a patchwork blanket of lead, moonstones, dragon’s teeth and blue whale kidney stones.  (and whatever heavy, strange, acward thing you can think of)

So it’s obvious that you had to be in an extraordinarily happy place to have rushed out to the theater when this movie was up on the big screen.  I don’t blame anyone for shying away from this one, depressing is being kind. 

The Beat Line:  Julie Christie tres skillfully portrays a lady who loses the memories of her life seemingly one by one while the love of her life and husband Gordon Pinsent struggles to cope with his wife’s illness as each day is some fresh horror.

The Good News:  Just when I thought I couldn’t love Sarah Polley any more than I already do, she goes and writes and directs like and old pro.  Granted this cast could direct itself, she shows how grown ups do it in the last 45 second of this movie.

The Pay Off:  It’s worth drudging through the pain to get to the end of this movie, not only does it all make sense, it’s 45 seconds of the only thing about our silly species that does make sense.  Sarah should be proud.

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