A few directors manage to show such
a controlled sensibility and maturity at such a young age! Sarah Polley’s
adaptation of Alice Munro’s short story ‘The Bear Came Over The Mountain’ is a
sympathetic tale of a marriage that lasted for forty five years till Alzheimer’s
disease slowly and steadily drifts the memory of the aging wife. The concerning
husband’s persistent efforts to deal with this unsettling fact leads the wife
to a caretaking nursing home to cure. However passing of mere a month, the wife
fails to recognize her husband and starts sharing company of another inmate,
considering him her life partner or maybe the closest friend of life time.
What’s harder, sadder and shocking
as one grows older, moving towards the final years of life? Is it death of life
partner who remain close witness or death of her memory where she fails to even
recognize you and everything concerning your relationship? How to digest and
deal with a situation like that? These are not easy answers for the questions
like that but the film made its audience think about the status of love of its
aging couple. It so sublimely and sympathetically let us witness the life of
this old couple with performances so carefully controlled and honest. The film
instantly reminds me, Haneke’s Cannes winner ‘Amour’, as this film shows
similar threads and shades between the aging couple. It devoids of complexity
associated with Haneke’s film but evokes the same sentiment and resonance from
its two key players. Julie Christie looks as graceful eve in her old age and it’s
not exaggerated opinion calling her performance here, one of her finest ones.
This is a film worth all sensible film lovers.
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