At the Movies: Young at Heart
The promo posters for the documentary Young at Heart feature a group of senior citizens and quotes from various publications - and Paul Holmes - proclaiming the film is a five-star wonder.
In today's marketing free-for-all, where every promotion would have you believe that every film or product is the best of the best, it's hard to know who's telling whoppers or where we might best spend our dollar.
Let me make one decision a little easier. Are Young at Heart's five stars a big fib?
No. Maybe the last star is disputable, but this is a Sundance Audience Award-winner and it's right up there. Prepare to be surprised.
In 2006, British director Stephen Walker travelled to Northampton, Massachusetts, to film the members of the internationally acclaimed Young at Heart chorus as they begin rehearsals for their next public show. The chorus members' average age is 80, and their conductor Bob Cilman introduces their new repertoire: Schizophrenia by Sonic Youth, Purple Haze, the Clash, David Bowie, R&B. There are grimaces, fingers in the ears, and excruciating attempts at unfamiliar rhythms and lyrics, but these self-confessed opera lovers have done this before. Since its origins 15 years ago, the chorus has rocked capacity audiences with Radiohead and Led Zeppelin throughout the US and in Europe. Modern music is not the exclusive property of modern youth.
The singers themselves are fascinating, funny, formidable, frail. Eileen is 92 and lives in a nursing home, but is the only resident with a front door key as she comes back from gigs in the wee hours. Ex-marine Steve, nearly 80, works out three times a week, drives his convertible at 130kmph and calls his girlfriend his "squeeze". Joe has survived six rounds of chemo, and Frank is in congestive heart failure.
As we inevitably become involved, the film becomes a poignant reflection on humanity, joy, compassion, mortality, illness and grief. It demands that we consider our own senior years and health problems, and elicits strangely strong reactions. I promise you, Frank Knittle's heartbreaking performance of Coldplay's Fix You will change your perception of that song forever.
Director/narrator Walker is not always discreet, and the third quarter dawdles, but the subject rises utterly above the production flaws. This is real life (and death), and it's absorbing stuff indeed.
If you're young, living fast with little thought for the older generation, then spend your ticket money on Hellboy II. If questions about ageing, illness, mortality and quality of life ever enter your thoughts, if you're an ageing punk, or if you wonder what you're going to do when you have to give up bungee jumping and white-water rafting, then watch Young at Heart and reflect.
These guys sing Staying Alive and Forever Young and really, really mean it. It is possible to grow old without being boring.
Maria Polglase
YOUNG AT HEART (PG) 1h 47m. USA doc. Next screening at the Village Theatre, Thursday 20 November at 8.00pm.
