Tagline: Sometimes you have to let go of what you can’t live without.
Away From Her is the lyrical screenplay adaptation of celebrated author Alice Munro’s short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.” A beautifully moving love story that deals with memory and the circuitous, unnamable paths of a long marriage.
Married for almost 50 years, Grant (Gordon Pinsent) and Fiona’s (Julie Christie) commitment to each other appears unwavering, and their everyday life is full of tenderness and humor. This serenity is broken only by the occasional, carefully restrained reference to the past, giving a sense that this marriage may not always have been such a fairy tale.
This tendency of Fiona’s to make such references, along with her increasingly evident memory loss, creates a tension that is usually brushed off casually by both of them. As the lapses become more obvious and dramatic, it is no longer possible for either of them to ignore the fact that Fiona is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
Sarah Polley had just completed work on Hal Hartley’s No Such Thing in Iceland when she read Alice Munro’s short story, The Bear Came Over The Mountain, the source material for her first feature film, Away From Her. “I was so unbelievably moved by the story,” she recalls.
“I had just finished working with Julie Christie, and as I read, I kept seeing Julie’s face in the character of Fiona. I’m certainly not one of those people who reflexively think about adapting stories – I just want to leave the things I love alone. But this fascinated me. I read the story and I saw the film.”
Known to most American audiences for her role as Nicole, the crippled, secretive daughter in Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, Polley has been acting since age six. In the last several years, she has also developed her skills as a filmmaker, having written and directed three short films, Don’t Think Twice, The Best Day of My Life and I Shut Love. For two years, Polley couldn’t stop thinking about Munro’s story, and she finally asked producer Daniel Iron, who produced Don’t Think Twice, to inquire about the film rights. “I threw myself into writing. But it’s daunting taking on the work of someone you respect so much,” admits Polley. “Alice Munro is one of my favorite writers because she looks right through things. The characters are all so flawed – so lovable in certain moments and so detestable in others. The adaptation didn’t feel like a huge process because the film was embedded in that story.”
In addition to Iron, Polley worked alongside producers Jennifer Weiss (who produced Polley’s Genie-award winning short, I Shout Love) and Simone Urdl, partners in the production company, The Film Farm. Renowned director Atom Egoyan served as executive producer. Having known and worked with Polley for years, Iron never doubted her ability to direct a feature. “I know how fiercely intelligent and diligent she is,” he says. “She’s been on sets since she was young and knows the craft better than any first time director. She shot-listed her first draft of the script.”
Egoyan agreed with Iron’s assessment. “I was aware, on The Sweet Hereafter, that Sarah was watching everything very closely,” he says. “It’s a natural progression. She has alarming maturity that comes through in the script.” Indeed, Polley’s understanding of the vagaries of a fifty-year marriage is all the more remarkable given the fact that she is twenty-seven years old and only a few years into her own marriage. Adds Egoyan, “There is an austerity, clarity and a dramatic through-line to her writing. It’s respectful of the source material and yet quite confidently able to expand on it as well. Away From Her does what cinema is able to do remarkably well, which is to take us, just through the human face, to places we don’t expect to travel.”
“Sarah was definitely ready to make a feature,” adds Jennifer Weiss. “If you watch her earlier films, you see she fits the Alice Munro style – there’s a subtlety and a simplicity at work. She knows how to work with actors to bring out the nuance in the same way that Alice Munro works with character.”
While Munro was not involved in the adaptation, she was pleased with the result, and left Polley a flattering voicemail message on December 23, 2005, a feather in the cap of the first-time feature director.
Away From Her is a love story about memory and devotion. The Andersson’s have remained committed to each other for fifty years, but now their marital tranquility is disrupted by Fiona’s failing memory at the hands of Alzheimer’s Disease. While Grant chooses to deny Fiona’s gradual deterioration, it soon becomes impossible to ignore.
Fiona first looses hold of recent memories – largely a good time in the Andersson’s marriage – and plunges back into the trauma of the past, resurrecting old emotions that both Fiona and Grant would rather forget.
“The role of Alzheimer’s in the film is a metaphor for how memory plays out in a long relationship: what we choose to remember, what we choose to forget,” says Urdl. “This love story moves you because you look at it from your own perspective and bring to it your own experiences,” adds Weiss. “It confirms that life is cyclical and we all go through the challenges of love and marriage and commitment.”
Creating the look for Away From Her
Award-winning cinematographer Luc Montpellier first worked with Sarah Polley on her short film, I Shout Love, and worked with her again on “The Shield Stories,” a Canadian television series for which Polley wrote and directed one episode.
Understanding the vital role winter plays in the story, Montpellier wanted to capture the luminescent beauty of the season instead of focusing on its harshness. “My intention was to bathe Fiona’s and Grant’s relationship with cool winter source light and stay away from warm, romantic clichés,” he explains.
The cinematographer also sought to modify the filmmaking style according to the story’s locations. “In Grant’s and Fiona’s home, the scenes play out within precisely composed frames, like a series of still photographs, letting the actors move about freely. The photographic style changes when we arrive at Meadowlake. There, the Steadicam conveys Grant’s uneasiness with the place as he deals with the sorrow of what lies ahead for his wife.”
Montpellier’s biggest challenge, however, was finding a way to express the shifting textures of human memory. “I shot segments on a hand-held, hand-cranked Paillard Bolex H-16 converted to Super-16,” he explains. “The Bolex’s frame registration gave the images an un-fluid quality, sometimes full of clarity, and other times clouded by emotion, that I believe mirrors my experience with memory. Sarah and I then worked together on the computer to digitally manipulate the sequences to explore the look of memory.”
While Environment Canada reported that January 2006 was the mildest January in recorded history for many locations in Ontario, the first morning of principal photography at Lake of Bays near Bracebridge, Ontario began at a brisk minus 33 Celsius. “Everyone’s eyelashes had crystallized,” recalls Weiss. “We were shooting on a frozen lake and it was exquisite.
From the beginning, we wanted to capture rural Canada in a cinematic style. These locations, especially the exteriors, were crucial to understanding the characters and the life they set up for themselves. They made the choice to make life simpler. But life and history aren’t always simple.”
Alice Munro’s work is a testament to society and culture in rural and small town Ontario, Canada. For production designer Kathleen Climie, this meant revisiting locations of her youth. “Marian’s house is a perfect example,” she says. “Even though the house wasn’t described in the script, I felt exactly what that house was like. When we went to see it, it turned out that this was identical to the house that Sarah grew up in, same floor plan, same suburban neighborhood.”
Climie carefully considers the characters’ psychologies before designing the space they inhabit. For Marian, she knew the interior should be very structured. For Fiona, her instinct told her that the cottage be decorated with a mind towards comfort. “Fiona has curtains,” explains Climie. “Marian has drapes.”
The move to Meadowlake required a delicate shift in perspective. Says Climie, “Meadowlake, the location, was the embodiment of the transition in Fiona’s life from outdoors to indoors, from reality to a memory of that reality. So we created an oversized nature mural in the facility visiting area which became a perfect metaphor for that journey.”
Away From Her (2007)
Directed by: Sarah Polley
Starring: Julie Christie, Olympia Dukakis, Gordon Pinsent, Wendy Crewson, Michael Murphy, Kristen Thomson, Alberta Watson, Judy Sinclair, Carolyn Hetherington, Grace Lynn Kung
Screenplay by: Sarah Polley
Production Design by: Kathleen Climie
Cinematography by: Luc Montpellier
Film Editing by: David Wharnsby
Costume Design by: Debra Hanson
Set Decoration by: Mary Kirkland
Art Direction by: Benno Tutter
Music by: Jonathan Goldsmith
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for strong language.
Distributed by: Lionsgate Films
Release Date: May 4, 2007
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