Still Devoted. Still Determined. Tagline for Still Mine
Still Mine is a new Canadian film by writer/director Michael McGowan that’s based on a true story about an older couple, together 61 years, in which wife Irene (Geneviève Bujold) is showing significant signs of decline. Her husband Craig (James Cromwell) sets out to build the smaller house she needs, getting himself in trouble by defying local building codes and such.
Rex Reed, New York Observer, calls Still Mine a “sensitively made, superbly acted and deeply moving” film that’s “without the melodrama, pessimism or sentimentality” of other comparable movies like Amour and Unfinished Song. “Yes, it’s about the inevitable consequences of growing old, but nobody dies, and you go away energized with optimism. If you have ever had a friend, neighbor or grandparent like James Cromwell and Geneviève Bujold, you can almost look forward to being an octogenarian. They are nothing short of magnificent.”
Watch the trailer below:
Kudos to Cromwell
By all accounts, Cromwell’s performance is the highlight of the film.
Geoff Pevere, The Globe and Mail:
While Still Mine pays close attention to matters like the fading family farm, increasingly intrusive bureaucratic regulations and the heartbreaking ordeal of losing a mate to irreversibly worsening dementia, its main spectacle is Cromwell’s Craig Morrison, a man built like a scarecrow and usually standing alone like one, and whose default mode of ornery sarcasm keeps him at a prickly distance from everyone around. As played by the remarkably effective Cromwell, an actor too often consigned to the margins of character performances, Morrison is a man of considerable complexity and frustrating bullheadedness, but always true to his own – if not the building inspector’s – code…
…(T)he movie’s considerable inspirational heft is provided not by Craig’s up-against-the-system quixotism but his persistent individualism, the deep-seated conviction that nobody knows his land, his business, his wood or his wife anywhere near as well as he does, and he’ll go to jail before he’ll admit any differently. The point isn’t that he’s right, but that he so firmly believes he is, he’ll build a house on it.
Rex Reed, New York Observer: “‘Still Mine’ is Mr. Cromwell’s film from first scene to closing credits…he is always present, alive and real, with a wealth of understated feelings. This is the greatest performance of his rich career.”
John Anderson, Newsday: “What would otherwise have been be a rather banal David-Goliath story…is elevated by Cromwell into something more weighty, and even existentially profound.”
The Couple
Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times: “…(I)t’s the intimate moments between Craig and Irene, be they of reverie, passion, devotion or frustration, that truly elevate this beautifully shot picture. Cromwell and Bujold, while significantly younger than their late-80s characters (though the petite Bujold, with her flowing white hair and lived-in skin, more visually fills the bill), inhabit their roles with nobility, grace and the wisdom of age.”
Chuck Wilson, Village Voice: “…a surprisingly sensual long-term marriage.”
Friends and Family
Rex Reed, New York Observer: “My one caveat is that, with the exception of one concerned but mostly exasperated daughter, the Morrisons’ seven grown children rarely offer advice or even a helping hand to parents in trouble, and Irene doesn’t seem to know any of them anyway. They get more aid from a young, frustrated lawyer (another wonderful performance by Campbell Scott).”