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CULT OF SADNESS
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As a regular movie-goer, there are three types of films that I tend to avoid: documentaries (see my previous post, Docs Must Rock), horror and tearjerkers.
Horror films these days focus less on frightening audiences and more on bludgeoning them into submission with gruesomeness and gore. If I want to truly scare myself, I’ll just sit back and re-read that last sentence, shocked and terrified at what an old fart I’ve become.
Tearjerkers baffle me for the simple reason that I don’t quite understand dropping 12, 13 bucks to spend 2 hours getting sad. Do people really need movies to plug into that emotion? Our lives are inherently sad. It’s not about wallowing in deep, dark pits of existential despair. Even if we are fortunate enough to live long, healthy, happy, and prosperous lives, sadness lurks around every corner as we try to keep at bay the knowledge that people around us who we love, admire and depend on will slowly but inevitably get sick, old and die. In case you’ve forgotten, we are all going to die. Without firm religious beliefs to ease thoughts of impending doom with visions of a joyous, eternal afterlife, we cope the best way we can with the absolute awareness that our narrative arc leads inexorably toward the gaping void of nothingness from which we have but briefly stirred.
I don’t need Ingmar Bergman to remind me of that.
Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Bergman hardly directed tearjerkers, unless of course we’re talking tears of boredom. (Boo-yeah!) The point is, I don’t need no stinkin’ movie to make me sad. I am perfectly capable of reducing myself to a quivering shell of a man, tightly rolled into a fetal position under the blankets, awaiting the Grim Reaper’s arrival.
Yet, not only do tearjerkers continue to thrive, some will catch a critical wave and move into the realm of ‘important’, ‘must-sees’, award bait. Think, On Golden Pond, Philadelphia or Terms of Endearment. This year, there’s a Canadian entry into the Pantheon of Weepies, Away From Her.
Call me hard-hearted and cold-blooded but I happen to think that there’s nothing particularly artful or original in these films’ exploitation of easy emotions. In fact, if I were forced to choose just one movie to watch in a perpetual loop for the rest of eternity, and the choice was between Away From Her and the dumbest, 14 year-old boy comedy in recent memory, say, Grandma’s Boy, there wouldn’t be any hesitation on my part. It would be Grandma’s Boy by a landslide.
That’s right. Hands down, I would rather watch the Adam Sandler produced, man-child-refuses-to-grow-up Grandma’s Boy over the critically lauded, double Oscar nominated Away From Her. Now I admit, I’ve put Away From Her at a distinct disadvantage, measuring it up against a movie that contains two weaknesses of mine: a primate and an excellent pothead character. Sure, Julie Christie got an Oscar nomination for her role as an Alzheimer’s victim but what’s surprising about that? Acting Oscars and disabilities go hand-in-hand while even the most sublime portrayals of a stoner are forever ignored.
This speaks to a much larger issue. We tend to fawn over high-minded seriousness as a more accomplished artistic feat than being funny. Tom Hanks sheds his comedic skin and suddenly he’s the new Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper. Regardless how routine the exercise in poignancy or how little new light is shed on the subject, if you can pull on the heartstrings and deliver a shot to the gut, you will be talked about in hushed, reverent tones.
Off the top of my head, I can think of at least 3 big belly laughs Grandma’s Boy provided. Is that simply the wrong part of the stomach to aim for? To be sure, it is not a flawless film, never reaching the giddy heights of frat boy comedy classics like Animal House or Caddyshack. As with almost every project associated with Adam Sandler, there’s a scattershot attempt at mass, broad appeal with jokes fired out to suit every age from 11 to 111, ultimately hitting the mark only intermittently. And yes, there’s the David Spade scene which I imagine elicited chuckles from.. I don’t know who. Has this guy ever been funny? Still, I found Grandma’s Boy funnier than the huge hit Knocked Up and twice as believable.
Swimming in the sea of sorrow, Away From Her seems to have escaped any such similar critical appraisal. It has been hailed as something just short of a masterpiece. The performances! The insight! The wallop of a powerful punch from a young auteur!! The tears have welled up to such a degree that sight is no longer functional. The lump in the throat has blocked the flow of blood to the head, diminishing judgement.
Granted, the lead performances were solid. Julie Christie was radiant. Gordon Pinsent was stoically understated. Where there could’ve been histrionics, there were none.
The film as a whole? In a word, sad. Unrelentingly sad and ceaselessly bleak. Life as only a filmmaker intent on creating a very serious work would see it. Adapted from an Alice Munro short story, The Bear Came Over the Mountain, Away From Her mines the source for every ounce of gloom and melancholy it can find which, on the surface, is not a particularly difficult task. It is a story of a 50 year marriage’s slow fade due to the onset of Alzheimer’s. The proceedings are rank with sorrow.
Absent from the film, however, are the story’s complexities and layers. Memory loss isn’t just the sole domain of Fiona, the wife and Alzheimer’s victim. The remembrances of her husband, Grant, are equally suspect due to both the passing of time and through his rationalizations and self-justifications about not always being the perfect spouse. Selectively combing through their past, Grant recalls a largely happy marriage escaping irreparable damage because of the sacrifices he made by discontinuing his philandering ways.
Only briefly does he wonder if his wife’s loss of memory is similarly selective. After an enforced month long separation when she first enters the nursing home, Fiona treats him as a stranger. Grant is forced to look on as his wife takes up with one of the other residents. Is he now being repaid for his infidelities? Ironically, it’s only after Grant recommits to an extramarital affair in order to help keep his wife and new love together that he is rewarded by the reappearance -- however briefly -- of his loving Fiona.
When writers adapt a novel into a film, their primary job is to boil the book down to its very bare essence. There can be nothing extraneous. Adapting a short story, the opposite is true. Ideas are fleshed out and bulked up. So it is telling to see how a screenwriter adds to a short story when bringing it to the screen.
In Away From Her, writer/director Sarah Polley largely jettisons the past from the story (a curious choice given the subject of Alzheimer’s but perhaps dictated by the miniscule budget of the film). Instead, she expands the character of Marian, wife of the object of Fiona’s nursing home affection who, in Munro’s story, is nothing but a pawn for Grant to help Fiona and is seen only through his scheming, lecherous eyes. Polley builds it into a budding relationship between Marian and Grant where together they begin to take the next steps in their lives as their respective spouses sink further away from them. So when Grant arrives at the nursing home to find a loving Fiona fully cognizant of him, his reaction is one of shocked despair rather than the ever so fleeting glimmer of hope that Munro delivers in her story.
Polley has been applauded and bestowed with great accolades for her choice. It seems that in the film world, artists deal in despair leaving hope to the chumps (or prose writers) and laughter to the clowns. With plenty of despair at my disposal, I’ll throw my lot in with those who can bring me hope and make me laugh.
