This summer, we’ve seen four good
“movies for grownups” that provide intriguing lessons on life for Baby Boomers.
Love and Mercy is, on the surface, a biopic about Brian
Wilson, the musical genius behind the Beach Boys. I was drawn to it, initially, by a kind of nostalgia—not
unlike the attraction of Jersey Boys —but
the reality was very different.
The music is there, of course, but the story is about Brian Wilson’s
tormented genius and how, after many years of suffering, he found someone who
freed him from an abusive psychiatrist.
The lesson: it is never too
late to find love and to start life afresh.
A Walk in the Woods gives us Robert Redford and
Nick Nolte as an aging writer and his pal from younger days who set out on a
final big adventure—walking the Appalachian Trail. I had read Bill Bryson’s great book and knew that no movie
would be able to capture its depth, but nevertheless A Walk in the Woods turned out to be a very entertaining comic tale
of two people facing their age and finding not only new adventures but a new
appreciation of their lives and loves.
I’ll See You in My Dreams stars Blythe Danner and Sam Elliot
in what I thought was the most satisfying movie of the year so far. Billed by one writer as a “coming of
old age” movie, it gave us a sympathetic insight into one woman’s journey to
confront the challenge of maintaining her personal sense of herself and building
new relationships in her older years.
It is a film about both renewal and continuity. We watched this movie over and over.
Finally,
there is The Age of Adeline, a fantasy about a woman who, due to a freak accident, stops aging in her late
twenties and must change her identity with each decade in order to protect her
secret. In many ways, it is an
allegory of adulthood, as we all live many different lives and, at some point,
many of us become the children of our own children. It is a very nice allegory that, ironically, was much more
fun to watch the second time around.
It
is interesting how, as the Boomer generation begins to reach retirement age and
has time for matinees and on-demand binge viewing, we are beginning to see
films that address our issues—not the traditional issues of aging, perhaps, but
instead a focus on the adventure of finding new ways to express our lives as we
shift gears into what may be for many of our generation an extended “third
act.” Perhaps the promotional tag
for I’ll See You in My Dreams says it
best: “Life goes on. Go with it.”
