FILMS ABOUT THE ELDERLY

An interesting cinematic development is the increasing number of films that deal with the elderly. The Iron Lady, Amour, Hope Springs, and the one I showed to the pensioners this morning, the Quartet, have all appeared during the past year. I am sure there are (and will be) others.

What's wrong with that, you may ask? After all, there are a lot of elderly in the world and their numbers are growing; fast. The interest lies in cinema's traditional role of showing the strong, the beautiful, the glamorous, the healthy or the plain fantastical, whereas these films show the weak, the wrinkled, the faded, the demented. Not all of them are brilliant films, but they are certainly better than (say) A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth instalment in what is now a very tired franchise.

Do I say this merely because I am elderly? Hey I'm 53. About halfway, I should think.

Walter Blotscher