Away from Her (2006)

On May 1, my plan for the evening was to wrap up all work in time for the 9 p.m. movie – Body of Lies was going to be screened. I was surfing channels prior to that, and then I across Away from Her. I had already missed the initial parts, but I started watching the movie since Julie Christie was familiar (she was in Finding Neverland).

A 45-year old marriage is the centre of its story, and the movie shows how the Alzheimer’s disease changes equations and definitions of love. Christie plays Fiona who suffers from Alzheimer’s, and she takes the decision to move to a nursing home given her deteriorating condition. One of the ‘rules’ placed by the home is that there should be no outside contact for the first 30 days of stay.

After a month when Grant (Fiona's husband) comes to meet her, he finds that Fiona has forgotten him and has now become affectionate towards a mute man named Aubrey bound on a wheelchair. Aubrey’s wife Marian withdraws him from the nursing home after a few days because of lack of funds, and then Grant watches Fiona’s condition worsen considerably. He then decides to approach Marian and asks her to allow Aubrey to visit Fiona at the nursing center. In the process, he develops a relationship with Marian.

Three scenes stayed with me.

While speaking to Kristy the nurse, Grant conveys that he feels Fiona is paying him back for his past infidelities by getting attracted to another man. The conversation goes this way:

Grant: “Well I sometimes wonder”

Kristy: “You wonder what?”

Grant: “I wonder whether she isn’t putting on some kind of charade.”

Kristy: “A what?”

Grant: “Some kind of act. Maybe a kind of punishment.”

Kristy: “Now why would she do that.”

Grant is watching Fiona have lunch with Aubrey. A young girl, Monica, has come to visit her grandfather and is bored out of her wits. She sits next to him, and they then engage in a conversation.

Monica: “So...why aren’t you sitting with her?

Grant: “Oh... I’ve learned to give her a little bit of space. She’s in love with the man she’s sitting with. I don’t like to disturb her. I just...like to see her I suppose. I like to make sure that she’s doing well….I suppose it seems rather pathetic.”

Monica: “If the guy I’m dating right now? If he was like you? I should be so lucky.”

When Grant is reading out from a book about Iceland. “Iceland is... It’s in the middle of the Atlantic. It’s an island. It’s the youngest country in the world. It’s constantly erupting. Volcanos and earthquakes. It’s always...shaking itself off.” This brought home the recent images that I had seen.

Would I recommend watching the movie? Yes! It is a moving (and at times difficult) account of how the definition of love changes over years.

Revolutionary Road (2008)

I am a fan of both Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and I know that both actors have grown tremendously since Titanic. I was convinced that Sam Mendes is a gifted director after watching American Beauty. It is not often that dysfunctional families get a chance to tell their story without trying too hard, and he told the story of Lester Burnham and his family particularly well.

All of this implies that Revolutionary Road is a movie that I should have watched over a year ago. However, after reading the storyline, I did not want to watch it just then.

I watched it when it played on HBO on 2 May this year. I did not manage to read the book on which it is based.

Caprio plays Frank Wheeler, and Winslet plays April Wheeler – an American family who lives on Revolutionary Road. Frank is a dreamer who has reconciled to his life (that takes the same path as his father), and April is the spirited lady who is determined to infuse life into, well, her life after the birth of two children.

In the midst of insipidity, April comes across an old photograph of Frank taken when he was in Paris. She then makes a plan to move the family to Paris – she would support the family by taking a secretarial position in a Government agency, and Frank would finally get the chance to have some time and think about what he really wants to do. After expressing initial reservations, Frank agrees to the unrealistic plan.

Then April discovers that she is pregnant with their third child, becomes irritable and tells Frank so after his insistence that something is not well with her. April knows Frank, and knows that he would not allow her to have the baby in France. She wants to abort her third child because she feels the child is hampering her plans – her chance of experiencing something different. Frank thinks the abortion is a disgusting idea, and tells her so. She is 10 weeks pregnant when this happens.

The tension between Frank and April is palpable and I could feel it in my living room, as if it was all happening right in front of me. Days go by, and April decides to undergo a (botched) self-performed abortion.

She loses her life.

The director’s sublime touch is noticeable in the scenes when Frank confesses to April (the night after she sleeps with their neighbour) that he has had an affair and she asking him why did he tell her now (displaying her indifference), when April threatens to scream if Frank touches her and then proceeds to scream the house down, where Frank and April have breakfast together for the last time, and where Howard Givings turns down the volume of his hearing aid after hearing his wife speak nastily regarding the Wheelers (after initially praising them to everybody she knew).

The movie left me feeling very sad. Tolstoy’s words came back to me – “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own.”

I thought of Frank and April long after the movie ended - the lead actors had made them come alive with their brilliant performances.

I was bewildered watching April get attached to her plans. Plans are meant to help you lead your life. They are not life itself.