Johnny Simmons

       

I saw The Last Station so long after the fact that it never managed to get a mention in my year end musings on 2009 – which were already late to begin with. I like the film, and its strongest moments came when the eldest thespians Mirren and Plummer were on screen together. Helen Mirren is, admittedly, a handful and Plummer is a perfect match for her. Though I do like Robbie Turner, I wish the film’s focus was more on the aging couple.

        

Speaking of which, I’d have preferred The Notebook if it focused more on Gena and James and less on Rachel and Ryan. It’s ironic, of the young lovers I’m least enchanted by McAdams’ performance but with the aging couples I’m absolutely smitten with Gena Rowlands (best in show for me). Any emotion that exudes from The Notebook is too often a result of emotional manipulation but the connection between Garner and Rowlands is too beautiful to ignore.

          

This was another couple struck with Alzheimer’s. For obvious reasons they needed to be apart just as much as they were together, and of course Julie Christie being her luminous self always managed to garner the majority of our attention. For all it’s plot though, Away From Her was at its best in those finite moments where the two would just take up the screen doing the most mundane of tasks. Perhaps it wasn’t life changing cinema – but it was beautiful to watch.

         

The drive to the ice-cream parlour will always remain as my favourite scene in a long list of favourite scenes in this one. Do they have an unfair advantage? Probably. Still, all real life couples don’t exist so beautifully on screen and they’re just so nice together it’s beyond words. I’ll ignore the annoying precociousness of Katharine Houghton (Really, that’s what Kate and Spence’s daughter would be like?) and just enjoy the moments where Christina is willing to bend to her husband’s whim…not because she must, but just because she likes humouring him.

Incidentally, this couple waited decades before they ever met each other. Yes, they’re two of their generation’s greatest so we shouldn’t shirk at how good they are at pretending to love each other for years, but it still amazes me. On Golden Pond’s cast is all around greatness but no one can match the sincerity (fake or not) in the relationship between the leads. Who knew that talking to birds in a lake could be romantic? Who knew that people over seventy could be romantic?

There is some unwritten rule that says tension must be sustained for any film to be good. I suppose in a rare few instances films are devoid of any acute sense of emotional tension: there’s no worrying whether or not the heroine/hero will get married, if that character will get the job, win the competition. It’s just a series of interesting, and sometimes profound events – On Golden Pond is one of those rare few films.

The plot of On Golden Pond would read thus – an elderly take their usual holiday on a cabin with the son of their daughter’s fiancé in tow. It doesn’t really tell you much, and On Golden Pond isn’t a story about actions as it is a story of people, of people in love. Norman and Ethel Thayer are well on their way into the grace [excuse the morbidity] and they are the perfect – if utopian – example of the couple as much in love at eighty as they were at twenty. Their relationship, one of ease and dependence, is the driving force of the narrative – Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn as such as the driving force of the film. The film definitively depends on them, and the ease and trueness of their relationship is clear from the get go. It’s a beautiful thing to watch these two actors – both legends – playing off each other. There is no shouting, no histrionics, no fights and not even any particular showing of tears. What we get instead is sheer simplicity that is just beautiful to observe.

                                      

Jane Fonda plays the daughter of the couple. Critics have somewhat lambasted her for not matching the brilliance of her “parents” but it’s a silly contention. These are acting legends; it’s difficult for anyone to match them. Fonda’s strongest scenes are those she plays opposite Hepburn. I’ve always found Kate to have amazing chemistry with her on-screen women [especially Holliday, Hussey, Houghton] and she brings out the best in Jane. It’s beautiful to watch.Doug McKeon and Dabney Coleman are good, the former gives a formidable child performance though the latter doesn’t get that much to chew, still their nothing to match Hepburn and Fonda [senior].

                               

Rydell did something special with On Golden Pond and in a year of Reds and this, I always sigh a little that Chariots of Fire took home the Oscar, but prizes are just superficial, and On Golden Pond is such a lovely film that lack of them do nothing to mar its beauty. I’m not sure if all will like it as much, but On Golden Pond is an especial piece of cinema. Simple, effortless and exquisite – it’s #59.