So you’re going to retire, eh?
The reason for this column is obvious. After decades of working with kids at elementary schools in Sebastopol and Petaluma, my wife, Karen, is retiring. Lots of possibilities for the pair of us—including several explored in the following films.
Winnebago wanderings
Jack Nicholson buys an RV in preparation for cross-country journeys with his wife in “About Schmidt” (2002). Look for the poignant scene when he returns to his office after the retirement party, and the revealing scene when Nicholson and Kathy Bates share a hot-tub skinny-dip.
We’ve always wanted to go there and do that
“The Bucket List” (2007) features Jack Nicholson as a billionaire, and Morgan Freeman as an auto mechanic who end up sharing a hospital room during cancer treatments. They decide to leave the hospital and actually do their daring dream adventures involving treks to the North Pole, Mt. Everest, China’s Great Wall, India’s Taj Mahal, and Egypt’s pyramids.
Pixar’s sublime animated tale “UP!” (2009) features a retired balloon salesman (voice of Ed Asner) who reacts to high-rise builders trying to buy his house by tying thousands of helium-filled balloons to his home. With the help of a powerful storm and a stowaway boy scout (voice of Jordan Nagai) the house sails down to the wild jungles of South America on a destination adventure the widower never got to take with his wife.
Retirement communities
The classic send up of “Seniors Only” retirement communities is the 1985 classic “Cocoon.” Some aging Floridians suddenly discover the rejuvenating properties of a swimming pool where space aliens have stored the pod capsules of their kind for eventual reanimation. Long before Viagra became popular, the effects on the seniors’ libidos aids their prowess in the bedroom and on the dance floor. Don Ameche won an Oscar for his smooth moves in this film.
Stretching the budget imposed by a “fixed income,” seven retirees from the United Kingdom answer a magazine advertisement for the “all inclusive” services of “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (2011) even though it is in faraway India. Each person reacts differently to the faded grandeur of the place, where the manager works tirelessly (but often ineffectively) to keep his guests satisfied.
Rules of Retirement
If Marilyn Monroe hadn’t had a small part in “As Young As You Feel” (1952), it would probably be lost forever. Monty Wolley plays a printer who is forced into retirement because he reaches the magic age of 65. He dons a disguise and returns to the factory posing as the president of the conglomerate that established the mandatory retirement rule, convinces people older workers are valuable employees, and is then rehired for his former job.
A critical part of being retired is making choices about your certain future. In “Get Low” (2009) a Tennessee recluse (Robert Duvall) convinces a funeral director (Bill Murray) to hold services before the man actually dies. “That way,” the fellow says, “I can be there to see it all.”
Possible eventualities
A film from Canada, and another from Australia paint realistic portraits of post-retirement sexuality. In Sarah Polley’s artful film “Away From Her” (2006) Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie play a Toronto couple who cope with the wife’s sudden onset of Alzheimer’s dementia by moving her into a residential care home. Once she is comfortable, she forgets her husband’s name whenever he visits, and begins having an affair with another resident in the home.
Paul Cox’s film “Innocence” (2000) presents Charles Tingwell and Julia Blake as a couple whose youthful romance was broken up by his parents. Reuniting in their seventies, they physically rekindle their long dormant feelings of love. Returning home, the woman’s husband asks, “What did you do today?” But when she replies, “I reconnected with an old love … and we went to bed together,” the husband doesn’t believe his wife and storms out of the house to get his doctor son to talk with her.
Just because these films are on this list, doesn’t mean Karen and I plan to tie balloons to a motorhome, sail off to a retirement home in India and have affairs in our seventies. It just means there are lots and lots of possibilities.
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