Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

PodBill Just what I expected

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

bandkstone I was very moved by this film. I thought the acting was excellent. I am mystified that so many people think it was disappointing because it was not "realistic."It's a STORY people. Guessing the same people who love Spiderman can suspend their disbelief.

grantss Emotional, painful, frustrating journey.The story of a woman who is put in a home after she develops Alzheimer's Disease, how her and her husband cope with with this, and how their relationship is affected.Very sensitively told, making for a very emotional movie. Maybe too sensitively done: the film moves incredibly slowly. Every scene is drawn out to breaking point. Plus there are some incredibly frustrating turns of events, which add to the irritation.However, the level of engagement with the characters is high enough for you to sit through it all. It's not a perfect movie, far from it - for the reasons mentioned above and the lack of a punchy or profound ending - but is watchable and endurable.

tieman64 Based on an Alice Munro short story, "Away From Her" is an excellent drama by actress turned director Sarah Polley. The film was produced by Atom Egoyan, Polley's director in both "Exotica" and "The Sweet Hereafter". Aesthetically, "Away From Her" resembles Egoyan's own early work.The plot? Gordon Pinsent plays Grant Anderson, a husband whose wife, Fiona (Julie Christie), begins to suffer from Alzheimer's disease. As her memory loss worsens, Grant moves Fiona into a nursing home. Here Fiona both forgets her own husband, and falls in love with another patient. Grant believes Fiona to be faking her illness as a form of punishment – he cheated on her with several younger women – but Fiona insists otherwise. She praises Grant for his faithfulness, for sticking with a marriage that could have collapsed, adulation which Grant feels is unwarranted.At its best, "Away From Her" touches upon the creepy fragility of the human brain, the fickle nature of memory, love, identity and sanity, and the often arbitrary ways in which relationships, romances and whole subjective personalities are forged and dissolve. All it took for Fiona to forget a lifetime was a minor neural glitch, and all it took for Grant to forget Fiona was a moment of lust. In "Away From Her", whole personal histories are but source code ripe for deletion. "Away From Her" ends with Grant "giving up" Fiona to another man, an act which Polley invites her audience to contemplate. Is this an act of love, of altruism, of selfishness? Is Grant attempting to preserve his idealised memories of Fiona, or simply allowing the memory wiped woman to move on? Actors turned directors often coax special performances out of other actors. In "Away From Her", Polley gets excellent performances out of Pinsent and Christie. The former's a reserved man whose immobility belies deep undercurrents and whose face – forlorn, kind but with wicked eyes - looks like it was torn from an Ingmar Bergman movie. Christie's even better; graceful, beautiful, and called upon to skitter from sanity to confusion to the clear-eyed confidence of a madwoman. Christie herself suffers from a Transient Epileptic Amnesia, a disease which causes recurring episodes of sharp memory loss. "Away From Her" was scored by Jonathan Goldsmith, whose effective score is superseded by a single moment of diegetic sound. This moment occurs when a mentally ill patient periodically strikes piano keys, a haunting sound which powerfully coincides with a particular on-screen revelation. Aesthetically, "Away From Her" is simply directed. We can forgive this; it was Polley's debut. 8.5/10 – Excellent. See the highbrow "Cries and Whispers" and the lowbrow "Remember Sunday".

mjcfoxx If you were an utter nihilist, you'd find this film to be too sentimental. And it does have the lightest touches of sentimentality, but this a debut feature from the little blonde girl from 'Avonlea', Sarah Polley, who I will probably always have an undying crush on. It's a debut, and it's not really sentimental, nor does it have more than the faintest glimmer of hope, because with Alzheimer's, there isn't any. There's simply bittersweet moments of clarity, followed by a shadow leading into an abyss. If you were an optimist, you might walk away feeling that glimmer. Yes, sometimes you get a glimmer. But it's like the mating call of a lightning bug. It's beautiful and it makes you feel at home, but it doesn't light the way. And sometimes moving on is merely that. Here, have some whiskey. And good luck to you.