Polley's debut all grown up
Studio buys first-time director's touching story of aging
Actors made me feel welcome
Sep. 14, 2006. 01:00 AM
GEOFF PEVERE
TORONTO STAR

For her first feature as a writer-director, the 27-year-old actor
Sarah Polley has taken on a rather formidable task: adapting an
Alice Munro story about a couple, played by Gordon Pinsent and Julie
Christie, whose 44-year marriage undergoes a crisis of heart-
breaking poignancy when one of the partners begins to drift away as
a result of Alzheimer's.
Reluctantly, the husband has to admit his wife into a home, only to
visit regularly and watch while she is drawn to another man and
gives disturbing indications that she may not even remember who her
husband is.

The risk would seem to have paid off: after the film's initial press
screenings, Polley's movie was being excitedly talked about by just
about everyone who'd seen it. And yesterday, major film distributor
Lions Gate — which two years ago bought Crash at TIFF — picked up
American distribution rights to the film for $750,000 (U.S.).
Meanwhile, the strong but subdued lead performances are being
seriously discussed in terms of possible Oscar nominations, and
folks were generally agog with the assurance and maturity of
Polley's skill behind the camera.

On the day of the film's public premiere (which also went over like
gangbusters), Polley sat down to talk about what drew her to this
unlikely movie material.

Q. Away From Her is based on Alice Munro's story "The Bear Came Over
the Mountain," which is a terrific piece of writing but must have
presented certain daunting challenges in terms of adaptation. Why
take it on for your first feature?

A. I'd never been so moved by anything I'd read. And there was so
much that didn't need to be adapted at all, actually. Even visually,
there were so many images that emblazoned themselves into my head.
So I felt that the challenge of directing — it was really just
taking those images and trying to recreate them.

Plus Alice Munro's characters are so finely nuanced and fleshed out.
So the thing that became really interesting in the adaptation
process was realizing how many moments in the story that are
character subtext, or that are written, but could become dialogue
without feeling arch. Which amazed me because I thought after the
first read-through I would take all of that out. Things like Grant
calling her "direct and vague, sweet and ironic," which is Alice
Munro describing her. I wondered if you could put that in a
character's mouth without it sounding strange. There's a lot of
moments like that. But the really interesting thing about Alice
Munro's writing is that she has such a strong voice in her stories
that you can actually take her voice and put it in character's
mouths. That was the joy of it for me, hearing that stuff.

Q. Was there something about the subject that was especially
meaningful to you? Aging perhaps?

A. Sure. The first thing was that I was kind of at the beginning of
this relationship with my husband David. And he had these ideas
about what love was that I found like painfully unromantic. It was
all about length of time and about a kind of sense of getting to
know each other and even hate each other and still ending up with
something.

But I was much more interested in the initial throes of a passionate
life together and the possibility that we could actually pretend to
be who we both wanted to be and that kind of show would never stop.
He was always pointing to his parents' relationship and saying,

`Look there's this kind of incredible romance in real life, and in
what happens even when you let each other down time and time again.'

And it's funny because at the time I read the story I didn't believe
any of those things. But it hit some part of my subconscious as such
honesty and so beautiful. That was coupled with the fact that at the
time I was in the process of looking at retirement homes for my
grandmother. I was going on all of these tours of these places.
Ultimately she went into a home and was there for the last few
years. She just died last month. But there were so many of the
moments in there I wanted to capture on film. These are environments
where we all go but we don't know much about the texture of them. I
thought it would be a really interesting thing to explore.

Q. Munro's story is relatively linear, but you fracture the time
frame to such an extent that one of the things that happens — like
Grant's visit to the wife of the man in the home Grant's wife Fiona
has fallen in love with — is introduced almost at the beginning.

A. I guess I thought it would be interesting to know kind of early
what's going to happen and to make the mystery about how on earth we
get there. I tried to make sure that any moment in the script when
Grant was most alienated and most hurt watching this man Aubrey and
Fiona were the moments that we introduced the most unlikely ideas,
like him asking Aubrey's wife to bring Aubrey back to the home. So
there was this constant tension between what we knew would happen
and how these characters could possibly find themselves getting
there.

I think also, in a much more basic way, it was kind of my coming of
age working in Atom Egoyan films. That's in my blood and I'm not shy
about saying that. He has been my greatest influence in so many
ways. Obviously I've been watching and learning from other
filmmakers, but for me to have a linear structure is something I
don't know what to do with. ... And it was funny because when Atom
first read the script his reaction was `Sometimes I do that too
much. This may not be the right thing for your film.' So he made me
think long and hard about doing it and whether it had a reason. So
he helped me clarify why I was making those structural decisions as
opposed to just making them because that's what he did.

Q. Do you know whether Atom Egoyan has seen it?

A. He has, and I think he's really happy with it. What was so
glorious about having him as the mentor on this project was that he
was there whenever I needed him. He didn't want to impose his
sensibility in any way. And any time he sensed his sensibility
engrained in me he'd say `These are some of the things I don't like
about what I do. And here's what the pitfalls are.' It was amazing
to be able to have that kind of dialogue with him.

Q. At what point did you start thinking about pairing Julie Christie
with Gordon Pinsent?

A.From the second I read the story I knew. It's funny because I
don't read short stories thinking of actors, but I actually couldn't
get Julie and Gordon's faces out of my mind while I was reading.
Which is weird for me. But there was nobody else for these parts,
even if was obviously a lot to be daunted by. I mean they're icons
and people whom I've respected my whole life. Plus I'm as afraid of
talking to actors as most first-time filmmakers. Probably a little
bit more so because I know what a thin tightrope of failure you're
walking.

But I felt like each of the actors in their own specific way found a
way of making me feel welcome in their process. Maybe more than they
would have with someone older. I think they felt quite paternal,
like this was a way to help me along. That was a pretty lucky
position to be in. They each kind of let me be more involved with
what they were doing than I otherwise might have wanted to be, and
just because they wanted me to get muscles toned as a director and
help me through that. It was amazing to have that kind of support.

Q How did you manage to skirt resorting to sentiment?

A It's dangerous because as soon as you try to make something into a
film, every pressure is on you and every temptation is there to just
take it an inch further — into being slightly manipulative or
pulling the heartstrings. With this kind of material people really
want to try to pull the tears from people's ducts.
The saving grace was Alice Munro's short story. You cannot try to
make a hankie movie out of that. You will be strung up and hog-tied
and beaten within an inch of your life. So that was there. That
original material and why it moved me was precisely because it
didn't try to manipulate me at all. It's almost stated facts. And
they just got underneath your skin and made a mess of you. So I
tried to just think of her.


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