But as much as the logic of Fiona and Grant’s minds drift apart, the one thing that the disease does not affect is the common knowledge of their hearts—the recognition that their greatest need is love: to be loved yes, but almost more so, to be able to love another.

We see it in Grant’s fierce determination to ensure that Fiona feels the love he has for her—even if the only way she will feel the effect of his love is through his facilitation of her relationship with another man, even if the continuous shifting going on inside her mind means that Fiona’s perception of what she recognizes as love will also be in constant flux.

We see the need in Fiona’s almost instinctual development of a relationship that allows her to find and express love within the realm of her understanding, in her immediate deterioration when the only love relationship she understands is taken away, and, on rare occasions, in the joy of a fleeting moment of understanding of the love relationship she shares with Grant.

We even see the same knowledge in and through the eyes of the wife of the man Fiona befriends. Like Grant, she reveals it in her determination to care for her ailing husband. But later, as she sees the sacrifice Grant is willing to make to ensure that his wife knows love, she too reveals almost a relief in finally knowing that her love will make a difference as she demonstrates her love for both her husband and Grant by letting her husband return to a love that registers in his smile and helping Grant do what he feels necessary to give his wife a love that does not confuse her.

Like the disease that instigates the story told in Away From Her, the path that the movie’s characters travel is filled with complex journeys of emotion and understanding that both resonate with the deepest knowledge of our hearts and challenge some of the firmest emotional beliefs of our minds.

The acting is superb, the score beautifully haunted by deep chords of emotion, and the story one that is not afraid to look the realism of suffering and love in the eye and set it before us in a way that questions how any of the simple stereotypes we cling to time and time again could ever truly explain anything that exists in such a complex world.

In world where true love is so often portrayed as rocky beginnings coming perfectly together for a happily-ever-after, Away From Her tells a story of a love that exists and shines outside of any sort of happily-ever-after and inside a world of imperfection, struggle, and shifting realities. It tells a tale of a love that is all about meeting us where we are and sacrificing whatever is necessary to bring love to wherever that place may be. 

And if that is what true love can look like, I think I might actually believe it is possible. If that kind of love is out there, I too only hope to be so lucky. If that love is real, if it is truly reaching down to me right where I am, if there is one who cares enough about me to approach me from every angle from which I might possibly recognize the love that is there for me, I just hope that I can believe in it enough to reach back, take hold of it, and allow the truth of a love that is actually believable to continue on through me

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