As we Boomers age, there’s an increasing number of films
that aim to provide succor for our pains, reassuringly telling us that we’ve
still got it inside, despite the infirmities and the charming little foibles of
our dotage. “Young@Heart,” the documentary about nursing home residents playing
and belting out current pop hits of their grandchildrens’ generation was the
best of these because, well, those folks still had it goin’ on. “The BestExotic Marigold Hotel” (first one only) wasn’t horrible, plus a great ensemble cast.
Way at the other end of the spectrum is “The Leisure Seeker”
a criminal misuse of Donald Sutherland as a doddering old academic succumbing
to a progressive dementia and an even greater criminal abuse of Helen Mirren as
his cancer-wracked yet unweathered and gorgeous ex-Southern Belle wife who
pines to show him Hemingway’s Key West home, which requires that they drive a
40-year-old rusty (plot point!) Winnebago from Wellesley to Key West, because
flying Boston to Miami would not make much of a movie I guess.
It’s got the “Old people just can’t shut up” trope, run
again and again. It’s got befuddled youngsters cowed into compliance with the old
folks’ wishes through the sheer force of will. It's got a cancer victim who moans occasionally to presage what is only
slowly revealed, where slowly means assuming that the audience is as intelligent as
the average houseplant. (I found myself remembering fondly the old Carol
Burnett Show, featuring a truly comic genius beauty, who would cough very softly
just once whenever a sketch required that she indicate the presence of some
fatal disease.) You’ve got your anxious and screechy antiques-loving middle-age
son who is apparently still deeply closeted, though Helen (“Ella”) has her
suspicions.
And it climaxes (ha ha!) with the miraculous Old Peen
that gives Old Geezers the power to bestow healing on their cancer-ravaged septuagenarian
wives, giving them the dewy afterglow and the courage to commit a
murder-suicide. This proved to be a comfort in the end, as it assures that
there can be no sequel.
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STRONG Salem is for everyone who wants to help and participate in getting Salem, Oregon, to quit chasing Growth Ponzi Scheme plans and instead become a resilient, fiscally responsible place that lives by the wisdom that "Communities exist for the health and enjoyment of those who live in them, not for the convenience of those who drive through them, fly over them, or exploit their real estate for profit."
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