The film is based on a short story by Alice Munro called The Bear Came Over the Mountain. It marks the directing debut of Sarah Polley aged 28 at the time. It is a wonderful film deserving of all the honours bestowed upon it. The setting is the "Bleak Midwinter" a Canadian experience. This setting becomes one of the characters in the film, pre-paring the viewer for the harshness of winter time and promising the hope of spring.

The film deals with loss and pain experienced by people when they have to confront Alzheimer's disease and with the loss to relationships, the loss to families, the loss in confidence experienced by victims (in this case by husband and wife).

It covers institutions and the rules they sometimes make, which can have deleterious effects on the people they, ostensibly, claim to serve. This film also deals with administrators and their staff and how they become so enamoured with the systems they put in place. Their goals seem to be the smooth functioning of the machinery not Nurse Ratchett, but insidious just the same.

An early scene shows Fiona (Julie Christie) and Grant (Gordon Pinsent) in their home. They are engaged in household tasks, but Fiona's forgetfulness in weighing upon them. She is aware of her loss of memory and we, too, are made aware when she stores the frying pan in the fridge, or when she leaves a saucepan to burn dry on the stove. Grant is desperately grasping at straws at moments when her memory seems to be functioning as it should. But reality intrudes when she doesn't return home after going for a short cross-country ski. She becomes confused and wanders away. In a lucid moment, she understands that the time has come for her to live in a HOME. She assures Grant that she has made up her mind.

What comes next is the interaction between the Institution and the Public. We meet the Supervisor (Wendy Crewson), proud of her job but not really mindful of its impact on her clients; we meet also the sympathetic and intuitive Nurse Kristie (Kristen Thompson). In the one month no visitors period, Fiona has forgotten her Grant and has formed an attachment with Aubrey (Michael Murphy). husband of Marian (Olympia Dukakis). Fiona is completely involved with Aubrey, who seems needy and who depends on her to build up his confidence. The staff at Meadowlake compliment Grant on the wonderful effect her attention has on Aubrey. Only Nurse Kristie offers solace to Grant, who is ever so long-suffering.

Alzheimer's can have an effect on one's finances, and we see Marian having to choose between keeping Aubrey at costly Meadowlake or saving their home. We see also the loneliness of both Marian and Grant in submitting to their human needs.

The movie ends with the progression of the disease. Fiona has been moved to the second floor where the more advanced patients are housed. Grant attempts to move on by arranging a meeting of Fiona and Aubrey, but first he must prepare her for this reunion. But Fiona, who had earlier remarked that she was beginning to disappear has been transformed. She is fully dressed, she remembers Grant and it is springtime in his heart brief though that might be.

This film is available on DVD at the Toronto Public Libraries