76. Window of my Eyes &...

Lyrics

Through the window of my eyes, I can see the rainy day
Sitting in the chair of my cool room, looking for a way to be the one I am
It's useless to cry for the things I once have known, thinking it will come back and reach my home
It's like a distant, like a distant face
It's like the shadow on my wall
Something that, that I cannot touch
A heavenly past that calls
The shelter of my mind hides my laugh and my tear
I keep on looking for a reason which is not here

Through the window of my eyes, I can see the rainy day
Sitting in the chair of my cool room, looking for a way to be the one I am
It's useless to cry for the things I once have known, thinking it will come back and reach my home


Window of my Eyes is a song by Cuby and the Blizzards, a fun Dutch rock band from the 60's. Their sound is closer to a an American prog-rock band than to a typical Dutch pop-music band, which is a good thing. This is their highest placed song in the list, but to me their best song is Appleknockers Flophouse, upon which we'll stumble later on in the list. It was hard to link a movie to this song until I decided that it was relatively reasonable to interpret this song as being about an Alzheimer-ridden protagonist in a retirement home.

The Movie: Away from Her (Sarah Polley, 2006)

This may sound a bit crass, but Alzheimer's disease is a very 'convenient' disease for screenwriters. For one reason, it is a very tragic disease, both for the protagonist who suffers from it, and for the family of the protagonist. The fact that the patient suffers from memory loss is tragic enough, but even worse is the fact that at times the patient has moments of clarity during which he/she is aware of his/her memory loss. It is perhaps the most harrowing disease, which means that a screenwriter doesn't have to work all that hard to create dramatic/emotional moments. All you really need are two good elderly actors, who can convey the feelings of loss the disease causes in them. Away from Her has two such actors in Julie Christie and (the to me unknown) Gordon Pinsent. Christie plays the Alzheimer-ridden wife who has to be put in a retirement home, while Pinsent plays her husband. Both of them are good and quite affecting and make this movie worth watching.

The second reason why Alzheimer's is quite convenient for screenwriters is the nature of the disease. There doesn't seem to be a a very logical progress to the disease. The patient can have be in a pretty bad shape at a certain moment, and suddenly in a much better one the next moment. Horrific weeks can randomly be followed by days of clarity, after which, just as randomly, the disease can have even more harrowing effects than before. This means that without being very unrealistic screenwriters can present the state of their protagonist according to the needs of the plot. When the protagonist needs to be forgetful for an emotional beat, he/she can be forgetful. When he/she needs to remember something important for another emotional beat he/she can do that. This is why a movie about Alzheimer can be quite challenging for a screenwriter. When done badly this can make the movie seem a bit too manipulative and maybe even a bit exploitative. Sarah Polley is certainly not exploitative here, but I did find her a bit too manipulative. The plot should be in the service of the Alzheimer patient, while here it to often seems to be the other way around. The condition of Julie Christie is in the service of the plot mechanics, which makes us care unfortunately a bit less about the character.

I don't have much else to say about this movie, except that I found it lesser than two other movies on similar subjects I've seen recently. One is of course Michael Haneke's Amour. The other one is Still Mine with James Cromwell and Genevieve Bujold, which takes a much lighter, but no less serious and emotional approach to the difficulties of old age.