A wonderful little slice of Americana, Sam Mendes’ Away We Go is by no means lightweight, but it’s the perfect antidote to his previous feature, the emotionally devastating Revolutionary Road. It’s a gentle, thoughtful film that may be seen as a lower-budget departure for the American Beauty director, but it ranks right amongst his better work.
John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph star as Burt and Verona, an unmarried couple expecting a baby in three months. They share a small home in rural Connecticut, a ramshackle place with a cardboard window – not that they’re poor.
Money is never really discussed in the film, but they seem to have decent-paying jobs, and can afford a cross-country trip with multiple destinations. No, they’re just stalled in life; settled into a daily routine, they’re not really happy but they don’t have the ambition to change their lives.
That ambition comes in the form of Burt’s parents (played by Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara), who surprise Burt and Verona with the announcement that they’re moving to Belgium. The couple has lived where they do because of the proximity to mom and dad; with them taking off, they have the chance to find a new home. But where to go? They trek across North America to find out.
The first stop is Phoenix, where they meet Verona’s ex-boss (Allison Janney), a stereotypical hard-drinking bad mother who treats her kids with indifference and makes a pass at Burt. Next up is nearby Tucson, where Verona’s sister (Carmen Ejogo) lives. Tucson is hot.
The couple then travels to Madison, to meet Burt’s cousin LN (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a stroller-phobic hippie, and then to Montreal, where they meet some college friends (Chris Messina and Melanie Lynskey), who have adopted a number of children in-between a series of miscarriages.
The last stop is an unexpected one to Florida, where they help Burt’s brother Courtney (Paul Schneider) and Courtney’s daughter, who have just been abandoned by Courtney’s wife.
Eventually, they do find home, in a heartfelt sequence that ends the film on just the right note.
Krasinski (best-known from the US version of The Office) is excellent here as the good-natured Burt, who puts on a good-old-boy facade when talking to clients, and never gets angry. Rudolph is good, too, though it took me a while to shake her Saturday Night Live persona.
The supporting cast is filled with recognizable faces, though there isn’t much depth to the roles; still, some of them are quite affecting, particularly Messina, Lynskey, and Schneider.
Burt and Verona are nice people: gentle, good-natured, they treat some of the craziness that surrounds them with aplomb. We rarely see characters like this in movies, which often focus on characters like those found in supporting roles in Away We Go. Burt and Verona are far from perfect, but as they meet the others, with their own problems, they realize how good they have it.
Away We Go is a low-key, personal film that needs to hit all the right notes in order to succeed. It hits those notes courtesy of a script by Dave Eggers & Vendela Vida, who I know little about, but I imagine they put a lot of themselves in Burt and Verona.
