Movie News
Away From Her (Lionsgate Films, 2007)Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent, Olympia Dukakis, Michael Murphy, Kristen Thomson and Wendy Crewson star in Away From Her (2007), the first feature film written and directed by Canadian actress Sarah Polley. It is based on a short story by Alice Munro, “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” which first appeared in The New Yorker of December 27, 1999. The ever beautiful Julie Christie, one of my favourite actors of all time, plays a Canadian woman who succumbs to the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. A heart-wrenching story. Haven’t read the story? Read the story here.
“The waves delivered crashing loads of gravel at their feet. ‘Do you think it would be fun—’ Fiona shouted. ‘Do you think it would be fun if we got married?’ He took her up on it, he shouted yes. He wanted never to be away from her. She had the spark of life.”
“I’ve always loved Alice Munro’s writing, but this story punctured something. I read it, stunned, and let it sit there. It seemed to enter like a bullet. So concise and unsentimental, nothing to cushion the blow of its impact. When I was finished, I couldn’t stop weeping.”—Sarah Polley
“The Bear Came Over the Mountain” is the last story in Alice Munro’s collection, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) and can also be found in Carried Away: A Selection of Stories (2006)
posted by Eric Forbes at 6:53 PM
4 Comments:
Eric, thanks for this post. I'll watch out for the film.
I chanced upon Alice Munro's books in the Zug canton library here, and have been hooked ever since. Bought her 'Runaway' recently and found it just as good as 'Hateship...' and another I've read (title forgotten, sorry).
Now Munro and Amy Hempel are my short story heroines.
I think Alice Munro is one of the greatest short-story writers in the world! Her stories are a goldmine for the film industry. I enjoyed Runaway and Hateship tremendously and look forward to her new collection.
Have you read any of Amy Hempel's, Eric? Besides her anthologies of short stories, she co-edited 'Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs', which is lovely, touching and hilarious by turns. It contains a very funny German-short-haired-pointer poem using to great effect both English and German words.
And an 'Odyssey' by a dog named Homer. ^_^
I'm afraid I have yet to read the stories of Amy Hempel but I do know that she is very popular in the U.S. I will look out for her collection in the bookshops. Her Collected Stories came out in 2006 and have sold well enough for literary fiction. The paperback should be out before the end of this year.
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