The use of film to explore concepts in gerontology. This is one of a
series of five lectures on the role of film in gerontology. Spoiler alerts, if
you have not seen these films, this analysis necessitates exposing the plot.
These notes are intended for you to click on the movie trailer sequentially with
the analyses.
The narrative arc in film is a static story board of how a
story evolves and develops, both evident as well as imagined. How older people are
portrayed in film is best described through the interpretation of this narrative
arc. An arc is the linear development of a story—a beginning, a middle and an
end. An alternate method of analyses
would be through the more limited interpretation of context, character,
symbolism, and other constructs.
One of the first films describing a simple story about older
people is the 1952 Japanese film Ikiru
by the acclaimed director Akira Kurosawa—acclaimed for the Seven Samurai, Rashomon,
and Ran. Ikiru has a fairly simple narrative
arc. A bureaucrat, on the cusp of retirement, is informed that he has terminal
cancer. The narrative arc focusses on the main character in the film attempting
to find meaning and leaving behind a legacy in his life before he dies.
This simple story highlights that after one’s entire life spent
doing what you are supposed to do—work, maybe family—that at the end what is
important is relationships. At the end, he finds some solace among his younger
mates, where he finds friendship.
This narrative arc, an old man at the end of life, was
further developed by another seminal director, Ingmar Bergman who in 1957 wrote
and directed Wild Strawberries.
Filmed in black and white, perhaps in homage to Ikiru, the film goes further in search
of the meaning of one’s life and leaving a legacy. Following a fairly similar
story of an accomplished bureaucrat—this time a professor—Wild Strawberries explores the question of what was it all about?
The lost meaning is a reflection that the character’s internal story did not go
far enough to include getting old. We do not have ambitions for getting old,
and once we get there, we remain without a plan. Wild Strawberries has been described as Bergman’s attempt to justify
himself to his own parents. The narrative arc told through actual and dream
experiences, mixes ghosts, fantasies and reality. Admired but not loved, the
protagonist starts to explore what the continuation of his story in older age
should be. Like Ikiru, relationships seem
to be the answer.
Such a conclusion is not far-fetched from what we observe at
the end of life.
In 2012 Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, wrote
The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life
Transformed by the Dearly Departing. Our two male protagonists in Ikiru and Wild Strawberries follow these regrets. These misgivings focused on
having unfulfilled dreams and unrequited loves. Not having the courage to
follow their dreams, where (mostly) men tended to regret working so hard. Stifling
feelings in order to settle for a mediocre existence. And not staying in touch
with their friends, and loved ones. And the final regret is not allowing
oneself to be happy. They got stuck in a rut. The agreement between the
narrative of these two films and the five regrets of dying people is stunning.
The films’ narrative arc, from a negative view of aging, exposing
a slow hemorrhaging of life force, the story transforms to positive highlights
of friendship and family. That it is not too late to address these regrets. But what if this transformation did not take
place? If the dystopian view of aging remains without the salvation of a
new-found narrative what would be the result? This is the story of the two
protagonists in the 2015 Italian film Youth.
Paolo Sorrentino’s film centers on two close friends sharing
a vacation at an exclusive Swiss spa. The two protagonists are, a director who
continues producing the same kind of films, surrounded by increasingly younger
writers. While the other protagonist is a music composer who has decided to
retire. What we have to work out is that the composer stopped composing—to the
chagrin of many—because of his wife’s dementia which he hid from everyone
including his daughter. He has made changes to address this trauma and his
aging. Negative events in life change our narrative arc. In contrast, the other
character, the director, only had one story—to remain doing what he did in the
past. He did not have a different story for when he got old, and the quality of
his work diminished. At the end, his suicide was the only answer to his failing
career since he did not have a plan B, an evolving narrative arc. We have a
starkly different outcome for what is portrayed as equally successful early
careers.
This theme of different projections of the story line is best seen in the whimsical 2013 documentary, directed by Zachary Heinzerling, on Cutie and Boxer. Two married aging Japanese visual artists, living in New York city, where one reached their azimuth of success a few decades ago, while the unknown and subservient wife is launching her trajectory of ascendence in her narrative arc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXS6Aby5AUg
This theme of different projections of the story line is best seen in the whimsical 2013 documentary, directed by Zachary Heinzerling, on Cutie and Boxer. Two married aging Japanese visual artists, living in New York city, where one reached their azimuth of success a few decades ago, while the unknown and subservient wife is launching her trajectory of ascendence in her narrative arc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXS6Aby5AUg
Cinematographically, a narrative arc can also be reversed. This
is the beauty of film, we can explore the importance of a narrative arc by
manipulating the sequence. This is a popular method in film, to imaging that a
life’s story can go backwards or stay static, anchored to a particular age
where you do not have to have a narration for an older age.
The digital masterpiece of the 2008 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button directed by David Fincher—of
the fame, Fight Club, Se7ev, and Gone Girl—is based on the premise that while
the main character is born old and starts becoming younger, everyone else gets
older and dies. The only connection the main character develops in the film, is
when his (descending) timeline converges with another character’s (ascending) timeline.
This is the meaning of the story, that a meaningful relationship is shared with
people in similar (time) context.
This theme is again is explored in the later 2015 film the Age of Adaline by Lee Toland Krieger
where the main character is involved in a car accident resulting in a traumatic
physical shock that enigmatically stops her aging.
The story focusses on two aspects of how meaningful
relationship is shared with people in similar (time) context, when she experiences
the aging and ultimate death of her daughter and the aging of her lovers.
What if you can go back and change your narrative arc. What would you choose? In Francis Ford Coppola’s 2007 Youth without Youth an older man is struck by lightning and starts to regress into his past. Not only was he getting younger, as the cases with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in his mind time was flowing back as well. This is the proverbial what would you do if you had to do it all over again.
Another technique used in film is to explore the “What If?”
question. Made in 2009 Mr. Nobody was
written and directed by Jaco Van Dormael. In this science fiction world where
the last mortal is about to die at age 118, the protagonist explores three options
that he could have made differently. Would the narrative arc result in a better
outcome at the end of life?
In the end, the protagonist acknowledges that although every
choice he has made had far reaching results in the future, ultimately none of
the choices are good or bad. The interpretation is that as long as we make
allowance for getting old everything will turn out well. Each will option will
result in slightly different outcomes but all will have a coherent story. The
narrative arc is written as we live life, and sometimes we are just too “busy”
to envisage that anything will change. Despite us knowing, intellectually at
least, that everything changes all the time.
A limited narrative arc, one that is missing a component for
later life, relegates older age to a dystopian existence. Only by having an
internal narrative that includes future dreams can there truly be a fully lived
life. What better than a story of Burt Munro, a New Zealand amateur
motorcyclist who wanted to break the world speed record and in so doing ignored
age completely. This is the adaption of his story: The World’s Fastest Indian.
It took 20 years for the New Zealand director Roger
Donaldson to make this film. In it, the protagonist narrative arc is changed
when he tells of the death of his brother Ernie by a fallen tree—and, in Burt
Munro’s real life, his stillborn twin sister—which changes the real life Burt
Munro’s story and view of life. Negative events in life change our narrative
arc. The beauty about this film is that the narrative arc ignored age
completely. Suffering from angina and later a stroke in 1977, the real Munro at
the age of 68 while riding a 47-year-old machine continued to set world speed
records for 1,000 cc bikes. He did not use his experiences to dictate his age
and his narrative arc did not stop at older age. He had his own ongoing story.
In the film although there are characters that try and stop him from pursuing
his narrative, the protagonist simply ignored them. Some of us are not so
lucky.
Where we collude in this restriction is that we promote a
restricted narrative arc for older people. Do a little exercise for me.
Let’s imagine that you have a 100-year-old woman that you
are going to interview. What is the single question that you will ask her.
Write it down.
Then assume that you have a 16year-young girl coming to be
interviewed. What single question would you ask?
Write that down.
The prediction is that you probably ask the older woman
about her past and the younger woman about her future. You have already hemmed
them into you view of what their narrative arc should be. With this knowledge
in hand, let’s review a recent interview with Jerry Lewis.
An awkward exchange where Jerry Lewis’s narrative arc focusses
on the future while the reporter is trying to force him—unsuccessfully, to the
great strength of Jerry Lewis—to focus on his past.
To age successfully we must not only have a story that goes
beyond adulthood—to extend into older adulthood—but we must also be vigilant
against those who unintentionally try and demolish our narrative for living in
older age, by translating it to “old” age. Our narrative arc is important
because it is how we conduct our life, including into older age.
© USA Copyrighted 2017 Mario D. Garrett
© USA Copyrighted 2017 Mario D. Garrett
