Film: Away From Her

The Tampa Bay Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies, Inc and the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society, Inc kicked off their co-sponsored 2015-16 Film Series “On Aging” with writer/director Sarah Polley’s 2006 Away From Her based on a short story (The Bear Came Over the Mountain) by Alice Monro. Film critic Roger Ebert described it as “the story of a marriage that drifts out of the memory of the wife [Fiona Anderson played by Julie Christie], and of the husband’s [Gordon Pinsent as Grant] efforts to deal with that fact.”  Of Polley he wrote that she, unlike Bergman’s merciless ‘winter light,’ “bathes the film in the mercy of simple truth.”

Discussant USF Film Professor Scott Ferguson, PhD called Away From Her a tour de force by Polley who made this beautiful film more “capacious, ambiguous, and interesting” then its contemporary Still Alice (which is based on a true story and which more narrowly focuses on the disease process of Alzheimer’s and how to combat its loss of identity). Away From Her is about being and time and difference, and about the “deliciousness of oblivion” in all its “passions, horrors, surprises, melancholy, and potential.”

The clinical discussant Kathryn Lamson, LMHC reminded us that “as we age, we move toward resolution, separating the essential from the non essential.” Grant suffer the inescapable loss of his wife and of her as co-witness to their shared lives.

Erickson (1950) extended Freud’s developmental stages beyond young adulthood to include love, care (generativity v. stagnation), and, over 65, wisdom (ego integration v. despair). Hildebrand (1987) noted “the creative power of continually changing relationships.” Aging can bring increased acceptance of the self (Wild Strawberries on Nov 22^nd), new discoveries, time for latent talents and for luxuriating in new found pleasures and for creative, social and spiritual endeavors (Quartet on May 17^th, 2016). Enthusiasm and curiosity can keep us young (Cherry Blossoms on Feb 28^th). The risk for despair comes, too, with age.  Loss of family (Amour on Mar 27^th, and, of course, Away  From Her) and friends (through death and empty nest), decline in sexual function, possible physical and mental infirmity (as in Away  From Her), isolation, childhood fears of abandonment, and proximity to our own death. Economic security may improve for some, but decline for others (Grey Gardens on Jan 24^th, 2016). It takes courage, and adaptability to face losses (Trip to Bountiful on Oct 18^th) and accept changes in function and the narcissistic injuries that ensue. Hopefully, we will be in good company as we age.

The sensitive and moving topic of aging will be discussed next on October 18^th at 2:00pm in Trip to Bountiful (written by Horton Foote) by USF Professor Adriana Novoa, PhD and clinician Linda Berkowitz, LMHC. Hope you join in.