POST #2
“He makes boring films about old people.”

One day, many years ago, my teenaged son was introducing me to some of his friends. After the introduction, he added: “He makes boring films about old people.” We all had a good chuckle over that, but later it struck me as a poignant reflection of the societally ageist waters we all swim in every day—waters that refuse to nurture an acceptance of our human life cycle in its later stages. My son was simply reflecting back the perceptions of the culture he was swimming in.

In fact, it took me several years to come up with a meaningful response to the question, “What do you do for a living?” As I matured from a young filmmaker into a weathered one, I finally learned how to answer more fully the additional question often put to me—usually with puzzlement. Why are you making films about “aging” (subtext: of all things!). Here is how I was finally able to answer that: I wasn’t making films about “aging” per se. Rather, I was telling stories about the responses of persons to the life circumstances they were experiencing in their later years as a human being. My films were about people, not about some abstract and feared notion of “aging”.

I can now further elucidate that brief elevator speech with the added reflection that films about the experiences of later life can be deep and rich. All of what expresses who you are as you live your life as a human on this earth, finally comes to a fuller and more pronounced rendition in later life.

Far from writing off your older age as insignificant, you can see it as a fruition of your unique personhood.

Part of how this happens is through the ever enriching perspective that older adulthood can bring. As you live from year to year you are becoming more–sometimes through a discarding, sometimes through a refining, but always through an integrating of who you were with who you are still becoming. Much of this may be happening unconsciously, but it’s happening. And all of it is happening in the context of what is currently going on in your life. And what is going on in your life is probably a rich mixture of challenges and gratification.

Whenever a mainstream movie offers something of this maturation process in either its storyline or in its older characters, I rejoice. Because, sadly, in spite of the plethora of movies in the last few years that present aspects of elderhood, it is a rare movie that treats elderhood with the integrity and fullness it deserves .

– Jim Vanden Bosch