Away We Go

After a night at Bear Brook State Park, I still wasn't ready to leave New Hampshire. In fact, I had one more stop on my farewell reunion tour of Granite State cinemas. In particular, I had resolved to catch an afternoon showing of Away We Go at the Red River Cinema in Concord.

After learning about it on Manchester tv news last year, I had gone up to the Red River---the only independent cinema in the area---to see a French movie, only to have it screened from a DVD in a small room with hard office chairs. I had very much wanted to return to see a movie in one of the nice stadium theaters there.

Today would be my chance. Away We Go was showing at 3 in the afternoon, which gave me the day to explore western New Hampshire. I headed up Hanover, where I walked around the Dartmouth campus, and then drove along the Connecticut River, stopping at the very nice Saint-Gaudens Historic Site, which was once an artists colony. I was really getting back in my trip mode.

I got back to downtown Concord with about ten minutes to spare. I wound up parking in almost exactly the same spot in the parking garage next to the theater as last December, when the streets were covered with a couple feet of snow. It's fun to have something be the same, to balance out the contrast of the two situations.

The Red River is just a delight. The tickets are only six bucks for nonmembers, but the auditoriums are very nice. Away We Go was showing in the Stonyfield Farm auditorium, no doubt commemorating a corporate donation. The corporate logo with the familiar cow was mounted by the door.

About twenty minutes into the movie, I couldn't help think, "Wow, it's nice to see a real movie for a change."

Yes, it was nice not to know exactly what was going to happen next. It was nice to be able to relax and enjoy the story and actually not sit there waiting for the next obvious plot point to arrive. It was nice not to sit and pick the movie about based on the assemblage of well-worn character and story cliches.

It was just damn nice to feel like I was seeing something a bit original and fresh.

The story is about a young couple (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) looking for a new home, somewhere in North America, where they can raise their in utero daughter.

In succession we follow them first to Phoenix, then Tucson, Madison, Montreal, and Miami. At each stage, they learn something about their own expectations, something that seems to make their task more difficult at each step. Each stop presents a new form of parental or family dysfunction that seems to await them, or some form of disappointment to dampen their dreams. All in all, it was a very good way of telling the story. I very much liked this screenplay, which was written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida. It's the kind of script that makes you believe in the art of screenwriting again.

Some damn good acting as well, much of it by familiar faces from television, including hte two leads. Fans of Two and Half Men will be suprised by the different-speed performance of Melanie Lynskey.

My favorite supporting performance was turned in by Maggie Gyllenhall, of whom I am a big fan, as a deranged college professor at the University of Wisconsin.

I couldn't help seeing the two lead charactes as much better nuanced versions of the typical Postmodern married characters (actually they aren't married, but we get an interesting alternative marriage ceremony on a trampoline near as the climax of the movie).

Burt (Krasinski) seems to be a typical week Postmodern boyfriend/husband, but really he isn't. He's actually got a complex strength beneath the gooey exterior. This is shown in the very first scene, which starts off in the Postmodern gutter, but quickly lifts itself out of it. He may say "I Love You" too much and too often, but he actually delivers the goods and decent provider and partner.

Likewise Verona (Rudolph) starts off somewhat as the seething bitch, with a chip on her shoulder, mad at the world (and her boyfriend) for reasons that she doesn't even fully understand. But we get to the learn the complex sources of her pain, and her journey to unravelling it, at least partially, to become a woman capable of being a good mother to her unborn daughter.

This is what art does. It takes cliches and makes them complex. This is cinema. I'm glad I got to see this movie in a fine place like the Red River, after a day seeing glorious sculpture as well.

Some days you just get lucky, and things work out.

It's another triumph for director Sam Mendes. At times I felt conscious that I was seeing a movie directed by the same guy who gave us American Beauty. There were some of the same themes at times, especially involving suburban disfunction in the imagery. But this lasted only fleetingly, and I was pulled back into the originality of the story. Maybe the only time I really felt like "aha, this is Mendes" was at the very end, when Mendes used the full length version of one of Alexi Murdoch's songs (of which are there nine on the soundtrack). I couldn't help recalling his use of Neil Young at the climax of American Beauty, albeit with a very different theme and tone. Just a little bit of signature, perhaps.

But heck, that's a masterpiece. Nothing wrong that kind of signature.