Riverdancer_G My spouse of 61 years has late-stage Alzheimer's. I have been his primary caregiver for eleven years. While the movie correctly demonstrated classic behaviors when symptoms are first obvious, it failed to truthfully follow the effects of phase changes on the patient and her spouse. I could write about my own experience, training, self-analysis, anguish, loneliness, emotional and physical needs, endless coping with behavioral and cognitive dysfunction techniques, our temporary assisted living housing, watching him slip away so slowly it is only obvious in my rear view mirror and watching a once virile man deteriorating with flashes of love in his eyes and occasional smiles, but I won't.I did not want to watch this movie. But I did. For the record it is a love story. I think it should be required viewing as more of us look to a future clouded with uncertainty waiting for a cure for Alzheimer's.

Python Hyena Away From Her (2006): Dir: Sarah Polley / Cast: Gordon Pinsent, Julie Christie, Olympia Dukakis, Wendy Crewson, Michael Murphy: Depressing film that will no doubt obtain those who have lived through its contents. It is Sarah Polley's directional debut with this Canadian drama about emotional separation. Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie star as an elderly couple dealing with memory loss. She is checked into a clinic and begins to lose memory of him and demonstrate affection towards a wheelchair bound elderly male. Conclusion presents a dilemma that places marriage on the line. Pinsent does a great job as a husband threatened with the possibility of losing his wife and he can only be a casual face within the day. Christie plays off the depressive state well as a woman dwelling in the dark yet believes she is within the light. Olympia Dukakis plays the wife of the wheelchair bound male. She has accepted her husband's condition despite Pinsent's willingness to hang on. Wendy Crewson plays the clinic head who delivers hard facts that aren't well received. Michael Murphy plays another nursing home residence who is receiving the affection from Pinsent's wife. It is a sad story and Polley capitalizes upon it with the winter atmosphere that symbolizes the emotion. It states a strong case of sacrifice and whether being away from her is best. Score: 8 / 10

johnnyboyz Away From Her could very well be the first suspicion riddled; identity orientated thriller revolving around paranoia, as well as that indelible sense of threat a lead often has in those sorts of films, that is born out of someone being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, that there's ever been. Such a statement will make the film sound cheap and nasty or exploitative; on the contrary, it is an immensely astute and really rather mature piece of work. If there is this sense at various times throughout Away From Her that the film strikes us as thriller-like, complete with the aforementioned characteristics of paranoia and distrust with those whom the word 'distrust' should never even register, then it is because of a remarkable cut-and-thrust atmosphere the film has throughout in its depiction of a person's world unravelling and everyone within it only appearing to turn against them.Indeed, the film will begin in the present before going back in time for its depiction of certain proceedings - starting with the elderly male lead in Grant Anderson (Pinsent) visiting someone initially suspicious of this man before having them turn into one of the very few allies our lead Grant appears to have left. There is a sense of the lead travelling here, and then residing here, as a specific story is told which is actually more broadly linked to the newfound ally's own tragic back-story than one would think. Grant speaks to this newfound friend, and the general atmosphere as things progress and we start to understand things a little more has it feel like someone is hiding out at a safe-house whilst recounting recent tales of people, whom they operated with for many years, veering away from them. With snow on the ground outside as far as the eye can see and this sense of shifting norms within specific patriarchies as immense changes unravel in a person's life prominent, the whole thing is made to sound like a political thriller. As the tale is recounted, we observe both suspicion and paranoia taking over Grant's life as plates shift and new orders kick in; the ambiance in the adjacent room a sports commentary continually speaking of a contest in which the duelling between two fighting sides is apparent.The depiction of how Grant came to be at this stage is what follows; the man having been more than happily married to a certain Fiona (Christie) for a great-many number of years and himself now serving as a retired university lecturer. This in mind, we deduce that Grant cannot be too much of a slouch in regards to certain academic and logical standards, whilst the revealing that his career subject was that of history puts across a sense that the man has always had a firm eye on the past – a professional standard which will now spill over into more personal realms. The pair appear to be in a decent state of matrimony, the couple skirting through what appears to be a pre-laid track through the snow in this, the nether regions of snowy Ontario, Canada, inferring a metaphorical reading from the same page and epitomising this blissful occupying of the same plains.The opening stock footage of a grainy Fiona in her younger years, and of which infers a kind of 'memory' aesthetic, appears far more prominent when it is revealed older Fiona at this time is loosing her more immediate memory – an item of such ugliness and frank sensitivity that it is initially introduced through a juxtaposition with a photogenic yellow flower designed to spark off a pleasant memory that she can no longer recall. It is further established Fiona's functioning mind may very well be deteriorating when a logical theoretical exercise proposed to her by a doctor about a fire inside of a cinema isn't answered particularly diligently; the film doing well to distract us from the situation with a later diegetic 'jab' between the two on screen characters at the American film industry, this being a Canadian independent.From these dangerous foundations comes Fiona's moving into a care home at the discretion of Grant, the catch being he is not allowed to see her for a period of several weeks by which time it is feared she will have forgotten him. Out of this, an impressive and highly involving tale is spun which manages to capture the tragedy of the situation alongside a particular tone of positivity or upliftingess; a sense that if this newfound scenario is what's best for her, then so be it. In a sense, the film is about letting go and about recognising times past and trying to move on – one might read the film into being about states of grieving and yet nobody has died; the element of death a slow, ongoing process of memory loss resulting in the premature distancing of one person to another. The film makes for fascinating viewing and the director is a certain Sarah Polley, a Canadian actress here taking up the directorial reigns for the first time while creating a very precise, rather ambitious, drama which hits the right notes.

moonspinner55 The wife of a retired University professor in Ontario, Canada, beautiful and literate, begins showing early signs of Alzheimer's Disease ("I'm disappearing", she says); soon it becomes apparent that her devoted husband of 45 years must commit her to a home, where she forms an attachment to another patient. Known cynically around Oscar time as the 'Julie Christie With Alzheimer's' movie, "Away From Her" is a measured, deliberately paced, absorbing but not overly emotional dramatic vehicle for the actress. Director Sarah Polley, who also adapted the New Yorker short story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" by Alice Munro, is exceedingly tasteful in setting up the pieces of this story--which do get a bit more complicated than at first appears--but she's too rosy-hued in delineating the tight bond between husband and wife. Gordon Pinsent, with his masculine stance and romantically-thick crop of salty-blonde hair, is the proverbial stalwart husband: patient, wise, dedicated, poetic. He does everything but deliver Christie to the doctors on a white horse. Late in the film, Polley slips in the notion that perhaps he hasn't been a prince all his life, but this information comes long after we see glimpses of Pinsent reading to Christie, dancing with Christie, recalling Christie's face in her youth, and visiting her every single afternoon like any other faithfully-devoted husband in the movies. While the film is very high-toned (with little messing about), it also has a subtle sly streak which creeps up on the viewer. Sometimes these changes of mood (particularly during a conversation between the husband and the general manager of the ward) have a sour affect, but mostly they help to keep the film from being a complete downer. "Away From Her" doesn't exactly offer hope in its assessment of a perfect marriage torn asunder by disease; however, it isn't your garden variety tearjerker, either. The picture gives its cast some very sensitive and nuanced scenes to play, and yet the overall presentation is (commendably) matter-of-fact. It examines the little touchstones of life without getting maudlin, a minor feat worthy of praise. **1/2 from ****