Before Away from Her
Diane McGowin (Mia Farrow - The Great Gatsby) has a well paid job as an administrative assistant for a group of attorneys where her ability to remember what is going on is important. It is why when she notices she is forgetting things that she takes it upon herself to get checked out at the doctors, especially as she is getting confused and forgetting words she had always used. As the doctor suspects Diane has early on set Alzheimer's but it is some thing she decides to keep from her husband, Jack (Martin Sheen - Running Wild), and their children. But it all comes out in the open one day when she ends up confused and lost, although her family had begun to suspect some thing was not right with her. As her condition worsens Jack has to deal with the fact he is losing the woman he has loved all his life.
Maybe it is due to this being a product of the 90s or maybe it is simply down to there having been better movies made since dealing with Alzheimer's disease but for me whilst "Forget Me Never" is worth watching it has that feeling of being rushed. I suppose rushed is not really the right word as here is a movie which tries to give an insight into Alzheimer's disease but done through the eyes of the person diagnosed with it. The trouble is that it ends up feeling like the writers have tried to pack far too much into one movie, trying to show every possible symptom and issue.
The thing is that whilst it feels overly condensed "Forget Me Never" is still one of those movies which opens up your eyes to an illness. We see how Diane initially tries to hide things out of embarrassment and fear, we see how she loses hours when she gets confused, we see how at times knowing what is going to happen makes her feel suicidal. But we also see how Jack tries to cope by ignoring what is going to happen and how he has to watch his wife drift away into a different life as she befriends another patient. That in itself leads to issues when you have two people suffering from Alzheimer's and getting lost although you also get some Alzheimer's humour where they say they could walk off in to the sunset together and get lost. Basically there is a lot of good stuff in this movie but it tries to cram too much in to one movie.
What this all boils down to is that "Forget Me Never" will give you an insight into what it is like when you have to deal with Alzheimer's disease both from the person with its perspective as well as their nearest and dearest. The trouble which this made for TV movie has is that it tries to cram too much in to one movie which unfortunately makes it feel forced.
