“Getting old ain’t for sissies,” an aphorism most frequently attributed to Bette Davis, has changed tack over the years. Like millennials being accused of never really learning how to “do” or “make” anything and constantly taking the more comfortable route, the baby boomers of Lance Oppenheim’s debut feature, Some Kind of Heaven, have also found their own easy approach–to old age. And it certainly makes sense considering the baby boomers are what spawned the “echo boomers” a.k.a. another nickname given to millennials.
The “fountain of youth,” as it is literally portrayed at The Villages, Florida, comes at a high price. Both out of pocket and metaphorically. But it’s one that many residents are all too eager to pay in their bid to gain entrance into the “Disneyland for Retirees.” Of course, considering Florida is the home of Celebration, the Disney-controlled unincorporated town right next to Disney World, why shouldn’t there be such a “facility” in the same state? Oppenheim, who is himself from the “Sunshine State,” surely knows all about the sinister nature of FL’s tendency to manufacture ersatz “havens” (or “heavens,” if you prefer). And that beneath that “dreamy” veneer is a hotbed of suppressed derangement.
Thus, Oppenheim slowly unfolds the developing narrative, painting us a portrait with vignette-type scenes. Like the one where Neil Sedaka’s “Laughter in the Rain” plays as a group of elderly women practice synchronized swimming. It feels sardonic, considering the bright, sunshiny weather, and yet, at the same time, it’s completely fitting for this population. For they’re determined to “laugh through the rain” of their inevitable demise, evermore imminent with each passing day.
“Everything here’s just so positive… I’m lost for words. I don’t see the slums, I don’t see death and destruction. I don’t see murders. You don’t see a lot of children running around here either,” one resident sitting on a golf cart declares to Oppenheim. And that’s certainly a positive–no need for snot-nosed youths tainting a carefully curated reality. One in which there can be no ageism if everyone is in the same age bracket.
A montage of scenes showing the cookie cutter aesthetic is punctuated by voiceover testimonials that ring out in unison, “You don’t need to go outside the Villages,” “You would never have to leave,” “Everything you ever want is here,” “Everything is here.” These echoed sentiments have an eerie effect, somewhat reminding you of that guy Miranda gets set up with in season two of Sex and the City who never leaves Manhattan because, “Everything you want is right here. Why leave?” Well, perhaps because there’s a whole world out there. But those living in this retirement community feel they have already paid their dues long enough to extricate themselves from the nightmare of consorting with the “riffraff” that inhabits the everyday realm.
To emphasize the point that beneath the surface of all this is plenty of discontentment intermixed with existential crises, Oppenheim chooses to focus on a quartet of stories framed within the overall portrait of The Villages, and these are the only people who actually get a subtitle telling us their names. One such story follows Anne and Reggie, a married couple who seems to be growing apart as Reggie delves increasingly deeper into his drug use. Another follows Barbara, a disaffected widow who doesn’t understand what everyone thinks is so hunky-dory about The Villages. Then you have Dennis, an eighty-one year-old-living on the fringe and out of his van, but still skulking around the area in the hope of landing a “classic woman” who will give him a place to live.
Their “offbeat” narratives are in contrast to the story being sold by the brochure. Further pronounced by Oppenheim ensuring every frame is saturated in color, with the hyperreal becoming surreal in the same style of Todd Haynes’ Safe and Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands. We see a shot of a sign that reads: “Welcome to The Villages, Florida’s Friendliest Hometown!” at the beginning. Odd, considering that it’s no one’s hometown, and is not liable to be friendly to anyone outside of a certain age demographic. Granted, Oppenheim was able to worm his way into enough hearts to get this documentary. A strange and pointed commentary on how nothing really changes when we get older, it all just becomes more crystallized and irrevocable. Perhaps Oppenheim is an old soul himself, for his name even harkens back to another creator of the baby boomer youth era: Jess Oppenheimer, the head writer for I Love Lucy–a show that shaped the cultural mindset for decades to come. It was an I Love Lucy-style approach that helped birth the concept of The Villages.
The current owner discusses how his father, Harold Schwartz, founded the community in the 1980s. “They’re living their American dream, as we are,” he assures before Oppenheim cuts to a scene of a statue of his father placed within the “fountain of youth.” Gary stands beside it and emulates the same pose. The explanation for the design of The Villages is: “We needed to create this place not brand new… we wanted to create it… old.” That is to say, modeling the town and its housing after the style baby boomers knew in their youth. Your I Love Lucy/Leave It To Beaver aesthetic, in other words. The intent here being, of course, for them to tap into that inner child that allows them to feel young within the confines of The Villages. Begging the question, how will they be forced to remodel if millennials make it long enough (without the Earth collapsing) to become elderly? Then again, millennials don’t seem like a generation all that concerned with “community,” or rather the entire construct of what a retirement home symbolizes: being cast out by those who no longer wanted to care for you.
Oppenheim is deft in his use of every seemingly “superfluous” shot. For example, an outdoor image of a house with a two-bulbed lamp post. With one of the bulbs askew and non-functional. It’s a telling contrast. For there are those in The Villages who are there to fortify the veneer, and those who are not. Like Barbara says, “I think that when you live in The Villages, you’re acting the part. Every day, every night. You’re part of the fantasy.” Barbara certainly does not feel part of it, walking around with a dazed and forlorn look, yet still trying her best to “get involved.” Even if the activities she dabbles in seem completely cuckoo to her (i.e. choreographed tambourine playing).
Despite living in a bubble, none of these people seem to have any illusions about mortality. That’s why they’re happy to hear a sales rep’s spiel about the importance of making funeral arrangements at a Ruby Tuesday, during which she tells them, “You’re gonna die. End of story. What if your passing took place right now at the restaurant? It does happen. We are able to meet your needs whether it is a simple cremation, a full burial–whether you pass away here or on the other side of the world. The longer you live, the more expensive it can be for your family when that time comes. So now’s a good time to start your preplanning.”
Reggie himself believes everyone in The Villages is actually still denying death. Hence, his reliance on drugs for altering his mind in a way that makes him feel “spiritual.” This eccentric behavior embarrasses Anne all the more because they live in the Leave It To Beaver reality. She even says that she’s started to notice how “off” his behavior is ever since moving into the community, for his “mentality” stands out all the more. And sure, even though we later come to find he had a series of small strokes, it still seems that Anne’s humiliation has to do with Reggie’s overall “personality defect” for a “compound” such as this one.
Meanwhile, Barbara hopes to organically meet a man that might help fill the void her husband left behind when he died. She briefly thinks that “margarita man” Lynn might be the remedy for her woes. And she truly believes they have a genuine rapport, further corroborated when they go on a mini golf outing. Yet Lynn is really no different than the rest of the male cads just trying to relish their single life in old age. “You gotta have a positive attitude,” Lynn tells Barbara, as though that will solve her golfing ineptitude. Of course, everyone would tell Barbara that she needs to be “positive,” just another way of saying, “Please drink the Kool-Aid and shut up.”
A close-up on Barbara’s chipped manicure heightens the effect of her displacement and dashed dreams within this “perfectly manicured” environment. In every way, she is the most realistic character to behold. For it is her tragedy that makes her so real. All cinched with the final monologue she delivers in the acting class she had decided to participate in. She opts for a monologue from AHS: Asylum, of all things. Specifically one by Jessica Lange as Sister Jude.
Showing her acting chops like it ain’t no thang (mainly because the content of the speech is no act for her), Barbara muses, “When I was young, I used to come home from school to an empty house. My father had flown the coop, and my mother worked as a maid in a hotel. It was very, very lonely. One day I found a baby squirrel. And I brought it home and I put it in a shoebox. Several days later, when I went home, it was very, very sick. It was actually dead, but I didn’t know it at the time. I had forgotten to feed it for a couple of days. So I took it out of the box, and I laid it on a table. And I prayed and I prayed for several hours. Then my mother came home and she found us. She was furious. She picked it up and she threw it in the garbage. And I lost control and I started screaming and crying, ‘Mama! Mama! God didn’t answer my prayer. God didn’t answer my prayer, Mama!’ She turned to me, she gave a little chuckle, and she said, ‘Judy, God answers all our prayers. It’s just rarely is it ever the answer we’re looking for.’ And that was it. That was it.”
Thus, after all this–a study in the seedy business of aging–we can only ask: will Oppenheim make a documentary about Baddiewinkle as a companion piece to Some Kind of Heaven before it’s too late? Her color scheme tendencies would already be easily built into the director’s preferred cinematography style.
