Having applied an arch, sardonic and Oscar-worthy eye to the corrosive nature of the marital bond with American Beauty (1999) and Revolutionary Road (2008), British filmmaker Sam Mendes gets a little mushier with Away We Go. Not so much that we can’t still sense his ingrained cynicism about the Church-sanctified matrimonial bond, but certainly enough to sense that Mendes believes when a lifetime commitment is done right, it can be wonderful.
Mendes refuses to give himself over completely to the notion that a perfect marriage is achievable. His protagonists in Away We Go – Burt (John Krasinski), a kinda-cool hipster who sells insurance over the phone, and Verona (Maya Rudolph), a strong-willed illustrator of medical journals – are not married, but have a deeply profound love and a handshake agreement that ensures they will be with each other forever.
Working from a semi-autobiographical script from husband-&-wife first-timers Vendela Vida and Dave Eggers (a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his 1993 novel, 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius’), Mendes’ film opens with a very funny and orally-intimate act that leads to the realisation that Verona is pregnant.
Though unplanned, the discovery is a blessing and sets the two bohemian spirits on a course of self-discovery and maturing. When Burt’s parents (Catherine O’Hara and Jeff Daniels) decide to fulfil a lifelong desire to move to Europe only one month before the baby is due, Burt and Verona see this as their opportunity to explore America, seeking out friends with whom they have lost touch and whose strong influences have helped shape their lives over the years.
These include Verona’s old boss Lily (a firecracker-like Allison Janney) and her wet-sponge husband Lowell (Jim Gaffigan); Burt’s old-neighbourhood friend LN (Maggie Gyllenhaal), now a New Age nutjob married to Zen-like dropout Roderick (Josh Charles); college sweethearts Tom and Munch (Chris Messina and Melanie Lynskey), still deeply in love but creating an adopted family after one too many miscarriages; and Burt’s brother Courtney (Paul Schneider), who is caring for their pre-teen daughter Annabelle (Isabelle Moon Alexander) in the wake of his wife’s sudden abandonment.
It is on this cross-border journey that Mendes allows himself some free-style filmmaking, but it’s not always to the benefit of the picture. Though each off the visits are designed symbolically to give Burt and Verona some insight into their future selves, Mendes goes for some very strange laughs and the result is wildly uneven, even misguided, in parts. O’Hara and Daniels seem so deliriously happy at the prospect of not seeing their grandchild, their disinterest borders on insanity; Janney is a hoot for a while but so loud as to be increasingly insufferable. Worst of all is the sequence involving Gyllenhaal’s 'LN’, a horribly unfunny characterisation whose storyline meanders on with no discernible direction to a pay-off that really isn’t worth all the 'free-love’/ 'open-parenting’/ 'tune-in-&-dropout’ dialogue that precedes it.
But Mendes, who is acutely aware that the film soars or falls on the believability of Burt and Verona’s love, hits all the right notes when he gets serious. Messina’s bar-room monologue about the impact of the couple’s most recent miscarriage is a tear-jerking classic (when Lynskey silently sinks into his embrace and Krasinki and Rudolph’s eyes meet, this reviewer was a sobbing mess); Krasinki’s minor-meltdown when the scope of his brother’s sadness becomes clear, and Rudolph’s childhood recollections are beautifully rendered and affecting.
It has been well-documented that Mendes made this film cheaply and quickly, straight after the tortuous emotionality of Revolutionary Road. And there is certainly a sense that he was not only cleansing his soul of the baggage that film carried, but also allowing his spirit to breathe a bit through the journey of Burt and Verona. There are none of the wildly-stylised cinematic flourishes in Away We Go that we expect from Mendes – no teenagers writhing in rose petals; no slow-motion gangster shoot-outs in the driving rain; no burning oilwells lighting the Iraqi horizon at night. With Away We Go, Mendes has created a flawed film but one that is his most human and uplifting work to date.
