Unlike virtually everyone here, I did not like or admire this movie. I thought it was pretentious, unreal, stiff and awkward. Yes, Julie Christie was terrific with impossibly self-conscious material, but that didn't help much. The characters feel like cardboard creatures there to make a point. We don't even know what their marriage was like, with the one exception that he had affairs -- that's it.
As the daughter of a woman hospitalized with Alzheimers for ten years until her death, I can tell you from observing my mother and everyone around her that there are too many silly false notes to even detail here. Just for one, the idea that the woman is so far advanced that she is putting frying pans in the freezer, yet has the linguistic and cognitive skills to say "All we can aspire to is grace and dignity" is beyond ridiculous. No film I've ever seen, this one included, has the courage to show what really happens -- the loss of thinking, language, personality, desire to shower and dress, the insistent repetitions or cursing or anger, etc. It isn't a pretty picture, like the one glamorized here, as if you need the warm fuzzy glow ("Let's make love before you leave!") to mist over. What really infuriates me is how over-the-top everyone has praised this because it's so "beautiful."
As the daughter of a woman hospitalized with Alzheimers for ten years until her death, I can tell you from observing my mother and everyone around her that there are too many silly false notes to even detail here. Just for one, the idea that the woman is so far advanced that she is putting frying pans in the freezer, yet has the linguistic and cognitive skills to say "All we can aspire to is grace and dignity" is beyond ridiculous. No film I've ever seen, this one included, has the courage to show what really happens -- the loss of thinking, language, personality, desire to shower and dress, the insistent repetitions or cursing or anger, etc. It isn't a pretty picture, like the one glamorized here, as if you need the warm fuzzy glow ("Let's make love before you leave!") to mist over. What really infuriates me is how over-the-top everyone has praised this because it's so "beautiful."