In the past two review-of-the-years, we recommended a really informative podcast on how to deal with burnout and an empathetic book about therapy and the struggle of life. This last human review of the year features two odd documentaries about hitting retirement and nearing the end of life.
Some Kind of Heaven (VOD) is a beautifully shot movie set in The Villages, Florida - America's largest retirement community of 150,000 people and often referred to as Disneyland for old people. It focuses on 3 characters: An 81-year old gives "being old" the middle finger, trips out on psychedelics, and partakes in the odd cocaine binge; A homeless man lives in his van and scours the bars and swimming pools looking for a sugar momma to take him in; And a recent widow looks to find love with the resident golf cart salesman. So yeah, it sounds as Florida as Florida is.
We're often told that as you age you'll eventually grow up, work everything out, and finally make peace with who you are and what you've achieved. This movie pitches something different - that loneliness and self-worth issues crop up at any age and you're not alone in that. Maybe we never reach adulthood? What does being an "adult" even mean? Are we all just figuring this shit out as we go along? Anyway, it's worth the $7 to catch it on video-on-demand.
Filmmaker Kirsten Johnson documents the final days of her father's life after he is diagnosed with dementia in Dick Johnson is Dead (Netflix). With his game attitude, she decides to recreate many ways that her father could die, from a falling air conditioner, to being sliced open by a loose girder, to being hit by a car.
Everyone's anxious to talk about mortality and face it head on, especially with loved ones. So it was refreshing to see this addressed in such a fun, forward, and bittersweet way.
One reviewer of DJID said, "Good art doesn’t just reaffirm that a thing exists, it gives you a new framework for thinking about it." Both of these movies did that for us.
Enjoy!
Kevin & Victoria
