Official Synopsis
Determined to build a more suitable house for his wife Irene (Bujold), whose memory is failing, Craig Morrison (Cromwell) is met with resistance from an overzealous government inspector. Facing a possible jail sentence, and with Irene becoming increasingly ill, Craig races to finish the house in this beautiful story filled with heart and humor.
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What a touching film.
The film starts with Craig Morrison in court. He is in contempt for building a house that the St. Martin building department feels is unstable and has numerous amounts of code violations, 26 to be exact. Trying to defend his position, Craig recounts the story of how he got there.
The movie takes us through an early recount of when Craig, and his family, started to suspect his wife was beginning to lose her memory. This is also the point where every aspect of the life that Craig knew begins to fall apart. He loses his cows on the farm, as he simply cannot maintain them. Then he loses his crops due to new regulations that require his strawberries to be shipped in a refrigerated truck. The film at this point is really trying to show how at sometime in life people stick to their old ways and reject change. That rejection, as Craig continually shows during the movie, results in our main character constantly running into immovable walls. His way of doing things no longer apply to the world around him, and this becomes the main/repetitive theme in the movie.
Soon after his farm life disappears, his life with Irene begins to crumble, as her memory loss starts progressing. It gets so bad that Irene nearly burns down the house by accident. Shortly after that incident, she ends up falling down the stairs and getting severely hurt. The last event prompts him to not only start preparing for life after Irene, but also in the meantime making her comfortable in her final days by building a one-story home that is safer and smaller.
Again, the reoccurring theme of the rejection of change is prevalent in this movie.
Not wanting to break laws, or delay time, Craig goes down to the building department in St. Martins and acquires a permit to build his home on his land. Craig’s need to make his wife feel comfortable causes a minor case of flexibility when it comes to accepting new changes. Regretfully, his fear of change is justified, as the permit opens up pandora’s box. The building inspector rejects his home for standards reasons, which end up conflicting with Craig’s traditional ways of doing things. Eventually his frustration of changing and accepting the way things are nowadays puts him in court, which is where our movie begins.
Like I stated before, I felt like this movie didn’t do anything specifically new or special to tell Craig and Irene’s story. The central theme of change was thick along the way and it was appropriate in the amounts distributed. Cromwell’s Craig is everyone who ever was or who will be in the future. Everyone at some point in their life stands still and says, “This is the way I am and I don’t want to change anymore.”
Cromwell sells that notion perfectly in Still Mine and it’s enormously believable from beginning to end. What’s impressive about this is that Cromwell never breaks from his values, even when the inevitable is upon him and he knows he is most certainly going to get into trouble, he continues forward because he knows he is right. More importantly, he never oversells this notion and never forces it. It seems natural and he plays it like he was actually going through it. It’s brilliant and inspiring to see this much dedication to the character.
Likewise, Geneviève Bujold’s Irene is hauntingly beautiful as someone going through the process of losing their life’s precious ability to remember. Her progression from loving wife who has a spotty memory loss to a lost person trapped within her own body is sad and moving. She doesn’t have quite the presence as Cromwell, and she doesn’t really need to be up front and center, but she keeps his character realistically motivated to continue his plight towards a house she can feel comfortable and safe in at the end of her life. Again, she is absolutely stunning in this role as Irene.
Of course, all of these characters and cast wouldn’t be possible without the vision of Director/writer Michael McGowan, who does a beautiful job in bringing to life, well, life. His characters are people you know and the story he tells is one that people will most certainly experience at some point. He doesn’t do too much and doesn’t pull any punches, which is why this movie works so darn well.
While his movie could have turned sad and depressing, McGowan somehow keeps all his characters and his very contained world very much in check so that it doesn’t do more than what real life would be asking. He did just a fantastic job with controlling and maintaining this world he created.
If you want a very touching, moving and somewhat low-key drama then give Still Mine a shot. It’s a bit more pleasant and whimsical, and more importantly ‘real’ than you might expect.
As for the Blu-ray portion of this movie, it’s darn good. While the content might be a little on the sad side, the vibrant colors of the country side captured in this film is really quite good, and very un-20th Century Fox. There are no artifacts or graininess in the picture. You get a lot of vibrant reds, blues, greens and browns (seriously, brown can be vibrant). Some of the wider shots of the country side are breathtaking on the Blu-ray, so you will get plenty of good visuals to hug and enjoy as the sad stuff comes through the story. The last scene of the couple together is pretty gorgeous and magnified because of the HD transfer. In other words, you won’t be disappointed.
Sadly, there are no features.
To the summary!