The new late art

The Canadian director Atom Egoyan's early works: The Adjuster, Family Viewing, The Sweet Hereafter etc, all fell into a single bucket: a critique of inauthenticity and distance in suburbia. Well-trodden ground, but he trod it well and distinctively and with great cinematography and casting (Elias Koteas as the signature lead).

I never saw his film about going to Armenia to revisit his roots, but with Away from Her he stepped into entirely new territory. Here the distance between people, an older couple still much in love, is medically driven: Julie Christie -- stunning as ever -- gets Alzheimer's disease and forgets her husband when she goes into and old folx home. The movie is about watching the husband come to terms with this.

Same beautiful cinematography. Same tricks, sort of, but an entirely new thrust. I think Egoyan's turn is something we're going to see a lot more of as the population ages. Cultural producers who were cynical in their early periods who refocus themselves to find ways to be a little more charitable with and accepting humanity but retain the drive to insight that made them worthwhile. Looking for something that's positive but not Hallmark milquetoast like the family feelgood stuff coming out of Hollywood (Dan in Real Life). We may hope that others make the effort to turn the corner as Egoyan has rather than rest on the laurels of their youth. You can see it in Aki Kaurismaki already, and I'd like to see Jarmusch and the Coen brothers mature to.