Directorial Gambles Pay Off As “Away We Go” Sweeps You Off Your Feet

Verona De Tessant: Burt, are we fuck-ups?
Burt Farlander: No! What do you mean?
Verona De Tessant: I mean, we're 34...
Burt Farlander: I'm 33.
Verona De Tessant: ...and we don't even have this basic stuff figured out.
Burt Farlander: Basic, like how?
Verona De Tessant: Basic, like how to live.
Burt Farlander: We're not fuck-ups.
Verona De Tessant: We have a cardboard window.
Burt Farlander: [Looks at window] We're not fuck-ups.
Verona De Tessant: [Whispers] I think we might be fuck-ups.
Burt Farlander: [Whispers back] We're not fuck-ups.

“Away We Go” was billed as an indy-ish flick, but apparently these days that only means it was released overseas and enjoyed only a limited release in the U.S. Any movie that has Kate Winslet’s husband, Sam Mendes, attached to it can’t quite be passed off an indy-like, but getting past that, this was a refreshing surprise. After all, Mendes has been the vehicle behind such depression-fests as “Reservation Road” and “American Beauty,” and while “Away We Go” was riddled with much of the modern cynicism that permeates those films, it offers up enough glimmers of hope and optimism to keep you keeping on.

From a directorial perspective, Mendes’s first big gamble was casting Jim from “The Office” (Jim Krasinski) and an SNL cast member (Maya Rudolph). Initially, Burt and Verona make for an awkward pairing and a seemingly forced attraction dynamic, but the pair as a team eventually wins you over. Catherine O’Hara and Allison Janney were tremendous in bit parts, as was the always-impressive Maggie Gyllenhaal. These were among the many friends and family members that Burt and the six-month-pregnant Verona meet along the way as they decide to search the country (and Canada) for the ideal place to bring up their child.

Along the way, Burt and Verona are shown many different ways to both raise a child and live as a family, and they begin to realize that their quest is becoming less of a search for where to live than a search for how to run their family. Their crazy journey takes them to many strange and eclectic places, including to amateur night at a strip club, where Burt’s friend Tom (Chris Messina) steals a scene with an emotional and tender stream-of-consciousness moment. And while they try to decide on where to live and how their family should be shaped, Burt keeps trying to convince Verona to marry him, to no avail.

And while much of the movie was certainly riddled with Mendes’s odd and occasionally depressing brand of film-making, it was also extremely funny as well -- quite a departure from most of Mendes’s flicks that I have seen. Throw in a great soundtrack and some touching scenes, and it’s easy to see why “Away We Go” was met with a lot of critical acclaim. On a personal level, as a recent father and husband who had and has many of the same natural questions and fears as Burt (and Verona), it certainly struck a chord, coming across as very poignant.

The ending could have come across as predictable and cheesy, but Mendes treated it with kid gloves, directing it carefully enough to make it work. With similar endings in other flicks, I would have been a bit turned off, but I have to admit that he somehow pulled it off -- and I couldn’t tell you how he managed that. I guess that’s why he gets paid the big bucks.

And while the treatment of the conclusion and rolling the dice on casting the main two characters without crapping out will define Mendes’s work on this film for me, I also have to applaud him for, in my opinion, actually taking a chance on himself. I suppose it would have been easy to continue down the directorial path he had been following, but he pushed himself to break out of that mold somewhat -- and the result was one of the more enjoyable films I’ve seen in a while.