How do you make a movie about oblivion? About the mind starting to go?

She'll be standing in the snow outside her house, on some sort of mission, something very pertinent, and then she'll forget whose house it is and why she's there. When the idea goes away, everything goes away. She stands up to pour wine for guests at a dinner party but forgets how to pronounce "wine." She tells her husband, "I think I may be beginning to disappear."

She is played by Julie Christie, who looks as "direct and vague" and "sweet and ironic" as she's supposed to—that's the description Alice Munro wrote for the character in the short story the film is based on. It was published in the New Yorker in 1999 under the title "The Bear Came over the Mountain," and I remember where I was sitting when I read it. Munro is one of those writers whose work works so well in its original form it seems perverse to do anything else with the material, and in the opening few minutes I was sure this adaptation (the directorial debut of actor Sarah Polley) wasn't going to work. But I was wrong—it's smart, it had me, it ended way too soon. It might be better than the short story. How is that possible?

For one, Julie Christie—old, awesome, and underplaying scenes that other actresses would chew up. For another, it's more of a play, all dialogue and ideas and very little getting-out-of-the-hospital. For another, Olympia Dukakis, as a smoker ("I quit quitting") married to the man whom Christie's character shacks up with in the Alzheimer's hospital. There are male actors too, but it's Christie and (especially at the end) Dukakis who make this movie. There's a great, lasting shot of Dukakis sitting at an old table playing with the rocks in her rocks glass and thinking—well, who knows what any of us are thinking?

frizzelle@thestranger.com