First time director-writer Sarah Polley aims straight for the hearts and minds of moviegoers with Away From Her. She adapted the screenplay from “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” a short story by fellow Canadian Alice Munro. Sarah Polley is most familiar as a young actress of note, in such films as My Life Without Me, The Claim, and The Weight of Water. 

Polley wrote the script for Julie Christie, the film’s star, an actress that Polley has long admired. Christie portrays Fiona, a woman struggling to hold onto simple remembrances, even as she appears to be willing to let go of some other, perhaps painful, and more complex memories.  

Grant (Gordon Pinset from The Good Shepherd) and Fiona have been married for nearly 50 years. He is a retired college professor and they live comfortably in an old farmhouse with acres surrounding them, where they cross-country ski on pristine powdery snow and can look out over a wintry lake. They are a great looking couple, with an appetite for life and each other. 

Fiona experiences several small incidents. She casually puts items away where they do not belong, and she has trouble recalling the word wine, as she asks her dinner guests if they’d like more. A total disconnect occurs when Fiona goes skiing on her own and can’t find her way home.    

It seems that she has done a lot of research on Alzheimer’s, and has even found a very nice residential facility that she wants to check into. Fiona’s wanting to leave her home seems hasty and premature. Then she also alludes to a time in their marriage when she was not quite so happy. 

Truthfully, Meadowlake, the care facility that Fiona has chosen, has a home-like atmosphere, at least on the first floor. Once a patient’s memory loss has progressed to dementia and full-blown Alzheimer’s disease, they are moved upstairs, and they are locked in. Meadowlake’s administrator (Wendy Crewson) is straightforward, honest, and pleasant. She tells Grant that a period of adjustment is needed, and that he can not visit Fiona for 30 days once she checks in.  

Fiona is determined to stay and she sends Grant off as she settles into her new accommodations. When he returns 30 days later, Grant finds Fiona totally involved in a relationship with another patient, a man named Aubrey (Michael Murphy from X-Men 3). She is attentive to this man’s needs as she helps him play a game of cards. Fiona can’t tear herself away from Aubrey to talk with Grant at all. She doesn’t recognize him, and she seems annoyed that he’s interrupting. Grant is confused, but he finds an ally in the head nurse (Kristen Thomson), who explains that this often happens.  

Aubrey’s wife Marian (Olympia Dukakis from In the Land of Women) is frustrated as well. She’s been at this a bit longer than Grant. But she removes her husband from Meadowlake as the attachment between Aubrey and Fiona grows stronger. 

Fiona sinks into a deep depression as a result, and soon she needs to be transferred to the locked floor of the building. Grant visits Marian to ask her to return her husband to Meadowlake, and they begin to share a common sorrow. Grant loves Fiona and he’s devastated to see her slip away. Aubrey is a physical and a financial drain on Marian, as she struggles to maintain their home and care for him on her own. Marian and Grant strike a desperate bond, tempered with compassion and caring. 

Away From Her is a love story that explores the unexpected terrain that lovers navigate over time and the lengths to which one will go for someone they love. There is also an important cautionary note sounded by the very wise head nurse, that a man’s memories of a long marriage are usually quite different than a woman’s.

Julie Christie gives a flawless performance as a woman coming apart at the seams. The on screen magic is there as it was long ago in Dr. Zhivago, Darling, and McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Christie’s recent roles in the films Finding Neverland, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, though good, didn’t allow for the radiance that is apparent in Fiona.  

This is a wonderful film that appeals to the desire in everyone for a lifetime full of memories.