Growing older, in many ways, is a slow and steady reckoning with one’s own mortality. For silent film star of yesteryear Norma Desmond, (Gloria Swanson) growing older is a continual process of denial. The reality that she will not perpetually be twenty-five is a horror Read More …
Spinning inspired variations on Ozu’s Late Spring, Claire Denis draws us close to pensive railway engineer Lionel (Alex Descas, quietly magnetic) and his daughter Josephine (Mati Diop, radiant). They share routines of quiet affection, having grown through grieving the loss of a wife and mother together. Read More …
As Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) aged, so did his films’ protagonists. Gone are the unformed young men of earlier decades, ripe for a jolt of enlightenment. Instead, the leads in his late films are reaping the consequences of decades of character formation, either condemned Read More …
British filmmaker Mike Leigh finds the extraordinary in everyday circumstances, focusing on characters who navigate difficult emotional tasks with a sense of optimism and hope. The happy couple in Another Year is Tom and Gerri Hepple (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen), an elderly pair who love food, Read More …
Persuasion opens with Sir Walter expressing disdain for those in the military who, he believes, have been aged prematurely by their experiences. It climaxes with a pair of lovers walking against the flowing of traffic, literally and figuratively leaving the parade of life behind. It concludes Read More …
A saying that I have heard several times is ‘To make God laugh, tell him your plans.’ Philosophy professor Nathalie (Isabelle Huppet) does not tell her plans for her life to any divine being or even to most of her family in Things to Come, but Read More …
‘New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity.’ This observation comes to us from Rumi, that beloved Persian poet, in his three-volume work of poetry called The Masnavi. His wisdom is evident in the direction he then gives us: ‘Therefore, O man, Read More …
Gertud stands somewhere in the murky middle of the spectrum between characters on this list who adapt and thrive and those who obstinately and self-destructively cling to the professions, ideas, and illusions of their youth. Dreyer’s heroine borders on the self-destructive in the way she refuses Read More …
The third in Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy finds Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) having grown up but not necessarily matured. If Before Sunrise explored the late adolescent notions of romance and sex, and Before Sunset addressed humanity’s deeper questions about love and destiny, then Before Midnight is the trilogy’s meditation on Read More …
Aging is a scandal to utilitarian societies. That is why how we treat the aged is a marker for whether we truly believe in the intrinsic value of life. It is also why retirement or loss of work figures so prominently in films about the Read More …