Journey into DVD: Away from Her

"Away From Her" is a depressing movie. There's just no getting around it; it's a major bummer.

I don't mean it's depressing in the manner that there are sad moments and bumps along the way for the characters but they are ultimately enriched by the experience and we all come away better for having gone through it. No, it's a flat-out depressing movie. Jeez, the DVD was even released on September 11 of last year.

Hey, Sarah Polley, who adapted the screenplay from an Alice Munro short story, put a lot of work into this and crafted a fine film. It's just a totally draining experience, not one that you should seek out if you're looking for something mellow to wind down with on a Sunday night.

Julie Christie deserves her Academy Award nomination for her touching turn as a woman who, thanks to the onset of the dreaded Alzheimer's disease, slowly slips away from her husband. The husband, too, played by a vaguely-familiar dude who's been in tons of other things but whom I couldn't identify, is fine. As Christie's character deteriorates, then is placed in a home, we learn things about their relationship. We see the woman develop a relationship with a fellow patient even as her hubby faithfully visits and grows ever more frustrated at the lack of response he gets.

This movie asks difficult questions about human relationships. I mean, there's obviously no debate about the evil nature of Alzheimer's, but a few other issues here might provoke some discussion. Is it "OK" for a spouse with this terrible disease to latch onto another, forsaking their own spouse, if they aren't in command of their faculties? What does the "left behind" spouse do? How should that be handled?

It's heartbreaking to consider that the constant presence of the husband as a visitor to the home might be cruel to his wife because it triggers a sense inside her that she has forgotten something. Is it kinder, more a sign of "love" for the man to just walk away? Do past marital problems and infidelities have any bearing on this? More than some previous movies that have dealt with the disease, this one explores more complex topics that are not attributable only to Alzheimer's. It shows that while we can all agree how much getting it sucks, a relationship affected by the disease is fraught with all sorts of difficult choices.

Did I mention I watched this with my wife? Awkward!

But apart from those kinds of issues, "Away from Her" is a moving tearjerker about the wide-ranging impact of a terrible disease. Polley did a hell of a job, and the fact that this is her directorial debut hopefully indicates she will deliver many more such quality movies in the future. I just don't know when I'll be watching this one again.

As for the DVD, it contains a few extras. After the feature, I started watching the deleted scenes with Polley's comments, but when she said she really disliked putting them on there (except maybe to showcase a performer who was cut from the finished product), I got kind of bummed out again and stopped.

Normally, I hate forced trailers, but this disc has a celebrity-filled PSA about Alzheimer's, and I can't complain about that. What I can complain about, though, is the assortment of movie trailers Lions Gate included. "A Good Woman"? "Beyond the Sea"? It goes to show how thin the Lions Gate library is when the studio has to dig so far back to find compatible previews for a prestigious film it DOES happen to distribute.