I must admit, when I heard that Sarah Polley had directed a film, it seemed a waste that she'd chosen as her subject the intricacies of the relationship between a pair of old people. I mean, Sarah Polley is plainly wonderful, and I thought that a film made by her could have been another Before Sunrise or Lost in Translation, or something like that, anyway - a generational film, and one to speak directly to me and to take to heart. But what it is instead is something no less worthwhile, I think: a graceful tableau (I know, not still, but it has that kind of air to it, as though every aspect is part of a single self-enwrapped whole) which, with no melodrama or false sentiment at all, depicts a situation which is at once complex and painfully simple, and affective (a real word or not?) in the same ways.
Two particular resonances for me:
* Away From Her is, in a way, like a much grown-up version of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - memory, identity, love (marriage), ice.
* NL was always terrified that she might lose her mental faculties when she grew older. As inapt as the memory may have been (the inaptness is appropriate, hah), it came to me while I was watching this film.
Julie Christie is very good, as is her opposite number (one Gordon Pinsent). And Neil Young drifts through - first "Harvest Moon" playing, wavery on the car radio as they drive to the care home, and then a lush version of "Helpless" by k.d. lang over the end credits.
