The Town Herald

The netpaper about Elftowners, by Elftowners, for Elftowners.

Away from Her

Review by [Captain Rachel Black]



Reality is fragile. So many things can disrupt the normal pattern of our lives or behavior, turning daily routine into chaos and our very personality into something completely unrecognizable. For thousands of people the catalyst in this destruction is Alzheimer’s. A diseases, like so many, that has no cure, and leaves the victim and their families with a total loss of hope. Away From Her is a tragically beautiful film that revolves around the descent of an older woman into the grey fog of mental disease and her husband’s desperate attempts to save her from herself.

Meet Fiona Anderson (Julie Christie). She is as beautiful now in her age as she was in her younger years. Her wrinkles and fading hair are just a delicate flaw, a reminder of what used to be there so many years ago. It is almost sad that we missed those years, for the movie gives us no chance to observe Fiona unaffected by Alzheimer’s. Within even the first scene she benignly places a cast iron pan in the freezer. Her husband, Grant Anderson (Gordon Pinset), says nothing as she does this, only placing the pan in its rightful place after Fiona has left the room.

As things worsen, Fiona fights it every step of the way, labeling everything with sticky notes in a final attempt to avoid the inevitable. Finally Fiona makes the decision that she cannot bear to have Grant, a man she’s loved for so long, watch her slip into an unrecognizable vegetable. She has too much pride in herself and too much love for Grant to subject him to the role that so many spouses step into when a loved one is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. That of the caretaker. With this decision made Grant and Fiona pay a visit to a care center that specifies in Alzheimer’s patients. Fiona, who has not lost any of the fire or will of her youth, forces Grant to admit her. A task he does not enjoy as the care center has a policy that the family may not see the patient for thirty days after admission. The care center says this policy is to insure the patient is comfortable and isn’t influenced by the wills or desires of family members. However, a nurse that Grant befriends (Kirsten Thompson) tells him she believes the policy is only there to make it easier for the workers.

The thirty days pass and Grant anxiously arrives at the Care Center. What he finds when he arrives, breaks not only his heart, but ours. Fiona has fallen in love with another man at the center. Not only has she completely forgotten who he is, but she is slightly frightened by his persistence and apparent passion for her.

The remainder of the film is an emotional roller coaster of memories and relationships. It is almost poetically tragic how Grant never gives up in his quest to force the memory of their life together back into Fiona’s atrophying brain. But we, as an audience, need to him to keep fighting. That is the drive behind the story, and the force that kept their marriage together.

Away From Her is poignant in its observations of loss and hope. It does not stray from its desire to paint a face and story onto the disease of Alzheimer’s by delving into religion or lack there of. There is a time and place for those movies, but Away From Her is not one of those films. It is a story that speaks plainly in its interpretations of relationships and the fragility of our self awareness.



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