Fulfillment, satisfaction, completion, contentment, peace. It’s what we’re all striving to achieve in our lives. Yet life is hard, and we don’t always stay on this track. Our flaws and insecurities, measured against our boundless imaginations, can make for a hard reality to adjust to if we’re not content with where we’re at in life. Especially living in present-day America, where reality has been proven to be whatever personal construction we make it to be, as Some Kind of Heaven shows.
And as we make it into the twilight of our lives, our shortcomings become even more magnified. So, wouldn’t a place that offered aging seniors the opportunities to pursue those fantasies be a good thing?
A new documentary, directed by Lance Oppenheim and executive produced by Darren Aronofsky and The New York Times, shows retired living at The Villages, America’s largest retirement community. This magical oasis offers its local community an unlimited number of recreational activities to do and, with that, an infinite amount of people you can be.
Home to 130,000 residents, the Florida-set retirement community is shown as a place where the aged have escaped to live out their final years, experiencing the fountain of youth (which is what The Villages founder Harold S. Schwartz advertised to baby boomers).
Oppenheim crafts Some Kind of Heaven into a wonderfully off-kilter experience, in which the dreamy surrealism of The Villages is seen as being in a magical trance.
Some of the gray-haired are clearly okay with having a good time, living out their hedonistic pleasures of “nightclubbing” and meeting new singles. But others, who Oppenheim centers the film around, see the falsehood in the proscenium and grapple with the darkness that lingers at bay.
The characters who Oppenheim follows are strong and distinct: there’s married couple Reggi & Ann, who are trying to maintain a marriage under Reggi’s cratering mental state (tai chi and drugs assisting). There’s Dennis Dean, a van-living man seeking to get close enough into The Villages to find stability (and a sugar mama); and Barbara Lochiatto, a widowed woman looking to step back into romantic life.
Oppenheim crafts Some Kind of Heaven into a wonderfully off-kilter experience, in which the dreamy surrealism of The Villages is seen as being in a magical trance. Captured in 4:3 aspect ratio, the cinematography by David Bloen captures the oddity in the manufactured synchronicity. And it very much captures the illusion of fantasy making our darkness.
Some Kind of Heaven is a must-watch. Its sharp observations make for a documentary that plays like a comedy and a dark drama. And underneath it all is a film about identity.
I’m reminded by a quote from Shantideva: “All the suffering there is in this world arises from wishing our self to be happy.” There may be something to that, here. But if all that’s too much for you, I know a place where you can go to make all your life’s troubles disappear.
Distributed by Magnolia Pictures, available on-demand this Friday, January 15, 2021.
