I went with a female friend, in my age range, and we both came out of the theater feeling dissatisfied. We’re programmed for a happy ending. It didn’t happen. We expect, when a viable romance rears its head, to see a see a satisfying rom-com fantasy go the expected route. It didn’t.
Instead, we see a portrait of a seventy-something woman, Carol, played beautifully by Blythe Danner, widowed as we are: two nice, sensible women, living alone in our comfortable Southern California homes, enjoying our independence, some pleasant friendships, loving family connections (however distant geographically), and reasonable good health and prosperity. Both of us, like Carol, had solid marriages and raised offspring.
Carol has three friends living in a retirement community nearby, but she resists their suggestions she join them. She lives happily with her dog until he dies.
Then she experiments with speed dating -- with the usual disappointments; has a brief but promising relationship with the charismatic Bill, played by Sam Elliot, until he suddenly dies; strikes up a December-May platonic friendship with the pool cleaner; and demonstrates in a karaoke bar that she can still sing. Long ago, before she became a teacher, she was a singer.
So we find her, in her twilight years, struggling to find meaning in her life. As Stephen Holden of the New York Times says in his film review, “It’s real subject is time and how people old enough to know the end is in sight deal with looming finality.”
Yes, her circumstances are comfortable. But as Holden says, “...when most of your life is behind you, what does having everything really mean? That’s the question this timid, wistful film addresses as it tiptoes around the subject of mortality.”
I found myself wanting more for Carol, which is no doubt a projection of my own desire for more -- more of something, something. At one point, Carol’s friends enthusiastically agree to take a cruise together -- to Iceland. I didn’t feel that would happen, perhaps because a cruise to Iceland doesn’t interest me.
At the end of the film, Carol adopts a rescue dog, so she has a new companion. For me, I’ve avoided dogs, cats, birds and hamsters since the kids left and the dog died.
Carol considers singing, as she visits the karaoke bar again, only to find no karaoke that night. That resonated with me, as I’ve been taking vocal lessons and had a fun experience recently with the San Fernando Valley Chorale.
One thing glaringly apparent to me, aside from the brief foray into singing, is her lack of creative expression and a spiritual path. Carol sits around sipping chardonnay and occasionally plays a round of golf. Other than that, her life appears aimless.
If Bill had lived, would she have “found happiness?” That’s a lot of responsibility to put on another human being. Yes, it would be nice to have a companion like Bill, but there’s still that shank of life to live, that gift of time on this plane of existence. What’s she going to do with it?
What are any of us going to do with it, no matter where we are on the age continuum? As Religious Scientists, we know we carry a divine spark within, that there is a Power for good in the Universe and we can use It.
As Ernest Holmes says, and I love this quote: “Life lies open to me--rich, full, abundant.
My thought, which is my key to life, opens all doors for me....I have only to open the portals of my soul and accept that which is ready to express through me. Today I fling these portals wide; today I am the instrument through which life flows.”
So Carol, as well as the rest of us: fling those portals wide! Do more, be more, have more.
And so it is.
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