Away We Go (2009) September 16, 2009
Posted by gproject in : Cinema, Recently Viewed , trackbackDirected by: Sam Mendes
As one of my favourite working directors, Sam Mendes has produced a series of films in the past decade that seem to celebrate a certain turmoil in life. Two in particular stand out as similar variations on this theme, namely the Oscar winning American Beauty and his recent adaptation of Revolutionary Road [review], which both took a downbeat attitude towards marriage and turned it into a biting modern family breakdown and gripping period suburban drama, respectively. With that out of his system, maybe it’s no surprise to see that this latest movie is a celebration of love and life - both the living and creating. It appears like a ray of sunshine in the darkness; a beautifully pitched alkaline to his better-known acidic screen relationships.
Finding themselves in their mid-thirties and pregnant, Burt and Verona decide that it’s time to sort their lives out. When Burt’s parents suddenly announce that they are moving to Belgium, the couple take the opportunity to free themselves of Denver and their house with the cardboard window, and move where they can raise their child properly. In order to make an informed choice, they stay with old friends and relatives who help them to understand that parenting isn’t a by-the-book procedure. Fearful of their own abilities, Burt and Verona look for a model family to base their own on, but it seems that no matter how many states they visit, there is no such thing as the perfect family.
The film has distinct, independent values at heart, and, complete with a couple of quirky lead characters and their collection of equally eccentric friends, lends itself perfectly to the low-key comedy drama category. It’s also a road trip film at heart, but instead of bustling its scenes around in a yellow VW van Little Miss Sunshine [review] style, the story focuses more on the destinations than the travelling itself. As such, we capture only short glimpses of its central couple on the road, and spend more time with the people they meet along the way, which in turn helps to establish the film’s abundant views on family. One of the oddest twists to the story is that Burt and Verona aren’t so much picking a place to live - sizing up the climate, location and such - as much as choosing the type of family they could raise. From dysfunctional desert-dwellers in Arizona, to an adopted menagerie in Montreal, their options are very much defined by the people, not the places.
It is this kind of wide-eyed innocence you come to expect from the film’s central couple, however. Burt and Verona are the story’s anchor and have the kind of non-standard relationship that you rarely see in film, which is to say, a perfectly happy one. They appear relentlessly in love, something that proves to be the movie’s one consistent thread. As the story bounces them around the different states, the couple remain almost hopelessly upbeat and unwavering in the strength of their bond. What it does not resort to, though, is turning this innocence into naivety or weakness - something that would have destroyed any investment in them. As it stands, they are wonderfully crafted creations, and, if not entirely believable, still make for enjoyable company on this whistle-stop tour of family archetypes.
So while the script, by first-time screenwriters Vendela Vida and Dave Eggers, works to give our guides the necessary human quirks, it is with the periphery couples where they really get to cut loose and have fun. From Allison Janney’s slightly bonkers suburban mum, to Maggie Gyllenhaal’s hippie family unit, most of the laughs are centred around finding the fun in dysfunctional, and highlighting the cracks in these so-called responsible adults. The script also finds moments to be more serious too, including a scene while in Canada that turns into the film’s most poignant stop-off, and an honest diatribe from a recently single dad in Miami that neatly strikes to the core of parental anxiety. Luckily, the story never loses its grasp on hope, which plays a big part in the eventual conclusion.
In order to convey the wide range of characters on display, director Sam Mendes has gathered a fantastic cast, of which those already mentioned all put in great work, as do Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara who, as Burt’s parents, give laugh-out-loud performances. It is with the two leads, though, where things get interesting. John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph are maybe not the most obvious choices for these quietly romantic oddballs, yet they mix the comic and human elements of their characters to 
make them marvellously charming rather than moribundly irritating. As perfect as their relationship is, they restrain the instinct to overplay it, or give you room to doubt the characters’ good intentions. They are undoubtedly the basis on which this film is built, and provide a solid foundation for the laughs that follow.
There is one more twist in the tale, however. For all its obvious overtones as the thematic antithesis of previous Sam Mendes movies, Away We Go remains similar in its pessimism towards marriage. Verona spurns Burt’s proposals as she “doesn’t see the point”, and while a deeper reason is revealed later in the film, what it really highlights is that it’s not a change in subject matter that makes this film different, but rather the way it is presented - an assessment that could apply to the whole movie. Gone is the sarcastic, downbeat attitude and in its place, something bright, honest, and hopeful. Accompanied by Alexi Murdoch’s melancholic acoustic soundtrack, the film whisks you off on a 98-minute journey and keeps you smiling all the way. A humanist holiday that’s well worth packing your bags for.
Away We Go is on UK general release from Friday September 18th.
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