![]() ![]() There can’t possibly exist a human with a beating heart that can get through the opening sequence of Up without shedding a tear. Noteworthy Cast: Ed Asner, Jordan Nagai.Polley’s touch ensures the connection between the couple is maintained even when they can barely look another in the eye-a poignant undercurrent that swells to the surface at Away From Her’s overwhelmingly moving denouement, a testament to the power of tough, heartbreaking love. The devastating account of Grant coming to terms with his wife’s failing memory, and Fiona navigating a world slipping from her grasp, is rendered with empathy and stark realism. In a tour de force performance, Julie Christie plays a retiree named Fiona who checks into a nursing facility for 30 days, only to have entirely forgotten her husband, Grant (Gordon Pinsent), once she returns home to him. Away From Her, which Polley helmed at just 27 years old, centers on an older Canadian couple whose bond is tested by Alzheimer’s disease. But her 2006 debut behind the camera remains her most gut-wrenching work. Sarah Polley is a filmmaker of rare emotional intelligence, from her innovative memoiristic documentary, Stories We Tell, to her anguished Oscar-winning feminist fable, Women Talking. ![]() Noteworthy Cast: Julie Christie, Michael Murphy.©Lions Gate/Courtesy Everett Collection Away From Her You don’t have to live to Sam’s age to see your own glimpses of what used to be waving at you from behind the present. His ache comes from remembering too well, so sharply and vividly that all he can see is the past. It’s a crushing admission, but also a lie. “If I knew things would no longer be here, I would have tried to remember better,” he says. ![]() “And then I went to see the nightclub I used to have, and thank God it was there because for a minute I thought I never was.” Soon, Sam will be gone too. I went to see where Eva lived off Poplar Street. When they visit him, the elderly gentleman recalls trying to revisit the house where he raised his children, the ballroom where he once played music with his brothers, and the place where his wife lived when he first met her. In the final scene, Sam (still played by Mueller-Stahl) is very old indeed, while the little boy is grown up with a son of his own-also named Sam. Old Sam is a storyteller, and his little grandson soaks up the tales as they create their own memories together. It’s a loving, sweeping, and intimate story from Rain Man filmmaker Barry Levinson, and it tends to break the heart as often as it fills it. This is the story of an immigrant family in 1950s America, told through the eyes of both its youngest member, Michael (a nine-year-old Elijah Wood), and its oldest, the grandfather Sam Krichinsky (played by German actor Armin Mueller-Stahl).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |