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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Unexpected turns in lifelong sentimental journeys
— redefining love, memory and old age through Alice Munro's 'The Bear Came Over the Mountain' and its film adaptation, Away from Her | | Author(s) | Nuria Casado-Gual |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 35, no 2, February 2015 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, February 2015 |
| Pages | pp 389-404 |
| Source | journals.cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Personal relationships ; Memory and Reminiscence ; Dementia ; Fiction ; Cinema [media] ; Comparison. |
| Annotation | Alice Munro's 2001 short story 'The Bear Came Over the Mountain' and its 2006 film version, Away from Her (directed and adapted for the screen by Sarah Polley), are two interconnected narratives through which diverse (and even divergent) representations of romantic love and memory in later life can be analysed. The two texts are constructed on an apparently simple plot line, which basically depicts the last phase of a 44-year-long marriage. But once the wife, Fiona, presents symptoms of dementia and is interned in a retirement home, they both allow for two contrasted interpretations. As will be demonstrated, these two possible readings unveil different cultural, social and psychological facets of memory in connection with late-life expressions of love. In their own way, each of them contributes to the construction of a dialogical narrative that mediates between the complexities of old age, dementia and gender difference, while at the same time demonstrating the power of literature and the cinema to reflect and refract the complexities of contemporary forms of ageing. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-150623009 A |
| Classmark | DS: DB: EA: HKF: UL: 48 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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