A Fellow Will Remember a Lot of Things You Wouldn't Think He'd Remember (Films About Getting Old)

Couldn't find a thread...I think I've seen most of the core films from this unofficial genre: Tokyo Story, Wild Strawberries, Umberto D, The Straight Story, Make Way for Tomorrow, Harry & Tonto. Haven't seen Ikiru. Many films belong to varying degrees: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, Histoire(s) du cinema, etc. Even something like the Joan Rivers documentary from a few years ago was primarily about getting old.

I wanted to post about Going in Style, from 1979 (would have been 17 or 18 at the time). I saw it when it came out, it always stayed in my mind, but for years I couldn't get it--resurfaced on Amazon last year, a bootlegged copy, but I found a real used copy the other day. I don't know how many people have seen it, or whether it's on TCM or Netflix.

It's really good. Putters along at a pace you just couldn't pull off today in a fairly mainstream film. (The director, Martin Brest, had some box-office successes in the '80s.) There are scenes where George Burns, Art Carney, and Lee Strasberg just sit on a park bench or around the kitchen table and don't say much of anything. The two best scenes are Carney dancing to some street musicians, and Burns flipping through a photo album after Strasberg dies. Really liked Charles Hallahan as Carney's nephew, too. Actually, one other great scene: Karen Montgomery as a hooker who flirts with Carney in a casino.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_y1USaJemzSs/TFc9R23BjUI/AAAAAAAAD2Q/yXL0R34NB40/s640/going2.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oMZkW0RjE4

Most Peckinpah movies

Straight Story

is in the OP

About Schmidt
Stand Up Guys

Sturgeon's law in full effect of course

Both About Schmidt and Broken Flowers struck me as well-intentioned but not especially successful road-movie variations on The Straight Story (my #1 favourite). Nebraska belongs too--I liked that better than the first two.

Amour
The Whales of August
The Shootist
45 Years
Tough Guys

the last 10 minutes of 2001?

Umberto D
Wild Strawberries
Michael (1924, Dreyer)
Nobody's Fool
Never Say Never Again

seems like a bunch of Clint Eastwood movies would fit - Unforgiven, Blood Work, etc. (Sturgeon's Law def in full effect there)

The Late Show (Art Carney again)

The Whales of August
On Golden Pond

Cocoon

clem, you need to see Ikiru (and I need to see The Straight Story).

Synecdoche, New York comes to mind.

Oh, and one we both should have thought of right off the bat: Jackie Brown (though I realize I'm defining as "old")

defining *middle age* as "old"

another middle age one is Save the Tiger, at least in part

Also Pixar's Up >>> Alexander Payne's entries in this genre, as far as contemporary examples go.

and The Wrestler

The Leopard
The Last Hurrah (Ford, Spencer Tracy)

in both of which the protagonist stands in for the passing of an era

Magnificent Ambersons fits that bill too I suppose

Just went to my library's website and put Going In Style on hold.

Was going to mention Nebraska - it's pretty fresh in my mind as a friend showed it to me recently, and while we were incredibly drunk I did find it genuinely affecting. Was surprised to look up the director and see he'd been responsible for a bunch of stuff I either don't like or have no interest in ever seeing.

Hard Eight

Thank u for this thread, clem.

Saw Make Way for Tomorrow last night and it completely wrecked me. And every time I think of the third act it starts wrecking me all over again.

thx. I just put a hold on the Criterion copy at my public library.

"Pa"'s obliviousness to the situation should be infuriating, but the film probably wouldn't be watchable if he were as aware as "Ma" is of the situation that they're in.

Last night I was thinking of an inversion of the story: a couple concerned more with each other than their kids, who grow up resentful. Years later, the kids take advantage of the parents' vulnerability to separate them. I'm visualizing something like the ending of Barry Lyndon.
It's possible that this is the subtext of Make Way for Tomorrow as it exists, though! I mean, we never see the parents and children in younger days - why and how did they raise a family of ingrates?

There've been a few the past five years: Michael Haneke's Amour (2012, not sure why I didn't mention it), two or three about Alzheimer's, and The Irishman fits to a degree.

And, in so many of Tommy Lee Jones' ruminations, No Country for Old Men.

Would I be an insufferable film pedant (what, like I'm not already?) if I suggested that the indignities of aging are the "real" theme of Bubba Ho-Tep?

That’s a good one

The horror film relic fits altho its more about the experience of living with an ageing parent

On the tv side twin peaks the return explores this theme in myriad fascinating ways obv