The Sheila Variations

I can't WAIT to see this! Christie is an extremely underrated actress in this country. Can't WAIT!

Alex - you'll flip. It's your kind of movie. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Wait til you see her husband - the not-well-known outside Canada Gordon Pinsent ... I mean, he just kills me. He barely has any lines, but his face says it all.

I miss you!

I want to see this, but it will be difficult for me to watch. It hits a little too close to home.

DBW - Yes. I totally understand that.

Christie has been so good in so many films--McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a particular favorite, but Shampoo, Dr. Zhivago, Heaven Can Wait, Darling, even as herself in one of my favorites--Nashville, that there is no way that I could stay away from Away From Her.

Well, and the whole recent revelation about Sandra Day O'Connor's husband ... and O'Connor's acceptance of his romance ... gives the story even more of a punch, I think. Like ... what do you do??

God, it's wrenching. But there's a kind of love that goes beyond what we can understand, or even talk about. That's one of the really good things about this movie: not too much dialogue. Audience gets to "figure it out" ... nothing spelled out too clearly.

And agreed: Christie has been so good for so long. I love her career.

yay for christie!! i think i mentioned something the night we watched this about a hunch i had that she might get an oscar nod....fingers crossed. she totally deserves it for this performance. i think gordon pinsent is equally deserving. they are so totally convincing together...you kind of can't imagine anyone else fitting so well into these two roles, or into the combined personality they create as a unit...they create such a flawed and complex whole that is riveting and so achingly beautiful to watch. i'm so glad i saw this with you...it was one of those ones....you know, where i needed to be in your presence when you experienced it for the first time.

On a completely shallow note... I just want to say, nice Hollies reference.

Allison - yes, I totally know what you mean. It was wonderful to see it with you. And it's really cool to see Christie getting some kudos!! How good that must feel for Sarah Polley too, know what I mean?

Allison - yes, and the relationship the two of those actors create together ... it just feels so real, and I don't know how they do it. Not too much dialogue - not even big flashbacks ... you just KNOW. Complex, flawed - compromised ... but God. The comfort there too. Those scenes of them cross-country skiing together - silently whisking across those white snowfields ...

or even in looks they exchange....like early on in the movie when she puts the frying pan in the freezer. that transaction right there could have been an entire short film...silent, but embued with sentiment, snagged with recognition, wrought with mourning. depsite what hollywood likes to call "chemistry," this sort of on-screen collaboration is rarely this deep or immediately resonant.

Right - and his big manly face - full of unspoken feeling. You get the sense that he could be a cold bastard, in the right circumstances ... but they worked it out, they made it thru.

sniff. You're so right about "chemistry". THAT was it.

I missed your post on Don't Look Now when it was new, which is too bad. It was never one of my favorite movies (though Roeg has often been one of my favorite directors), but it is very much the kind a guy never forgets, which is almost as good.

The film played at the BAM Rose Cinemas just a few months ago, and I was mighty pleased to catch it lo these 20 years since first viewing. It's interesting how dated the performances have become, in some ways - not a lot of clarity yet (at the time) on the difference between the camera and the theatrical eye, although you can see both Sutherland and Christie learning from what came before.

I was most surprised at how indistinct the movie was. We've honed film technology into crisp pin-drop precision that could barely be imagined once. The picture is flocked and constantly in internal motion; the sound gutters and sometimes booms. Compared to our precise pixels it's a little hard to watch, as much a tech relic now as Nosferatu was in the clever age of, oh, I don't know, The Howling or something. Roeg is a kinetic director, but there's more controlled motion in any given frame of 24 than there is in the whole movie - the Steadicam was just a couple of years down the pike, at that point.

All in all a murky and puzzling afternoon, spent fishing memories out of dark waters.

Linus - never stop commenting on my blog. Okay? That's an order. Your insights are always wonderful, thought-provoking. To me, the imperfections (as we would see it now) of Dont Look Now add to its power and uneasiness ... It's not a perfect movie, and there were parts of it that flat out did not work for me - but to me it is that rarity in nowadays G-rated-obsessed world: a movie for ADULTS.