Two Films About Old Age
Two Films About Old Age.
Recently, I watched two films about old people. One of them has just won a number of Oscars and all the accolades that Hollywood lavishes upon the films that they deem as “culturally significant.”
Nomadland is a film about a bunch of old American women who somehow failed or refused to fit in. A perfect American theme. And these women have decided to “lead their own life.” Another perfect American theme. And they live it in their vans or mobile homes, supporting themselves by taking temporary jobs here and there -- Amazon storage facilities mostly -- and riding their vehicles into sunset eventually. Thelma and Louise for the old and decrepit, in other words. This film, despite its desire to be and look different, is very American: the search for the last frontier, the escape to the territories, to the imaginary west.
The second film is about a bunch of old Italian men, who pursue their traditional way of life – truffle hunting – despite all the signals to seize and desist that the culture sends them. It is called The Truffle Hunters, and even though it didn’t win any Oscars, it is a much stronger film in my opinion. The Truffle Hunters, by the way, is also an American film made by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw; it is full of nostalgia for the old world and its simple, traditional, old-fashion ways.
Gender differences are clear, and so are the accents. The Truffle Hunters is a documentary with a lot of fictional elements, as opposed to Nomadland, which is sort of fictional, but features a lot of real life characters playing themselves. But these differences are superficial.
The multi-Oscar winner, just judging by its title, is much more ambitious and pretentious. It wants to make a statement, it attracts attention to itself: look how different we are. We are talking about lands and nomads. We the filmmakers, our themes, our characters, even the actors, are so different. But take this Frances McDormand, who loves the camera and promotes this camera gaze with the eagerness of young starlets posing for the male gaze of the camera. Is she really that different? Critics mocked Solzhenitsyn for writing Socialist Realist fiction, while simply turning pluses into minuses and vice versa. Another criticism raised against Solzhenitsyn was that he achieved the fame and fortune at the backs of the people he described.
This film has reminded me of the criticism leveled at Solzhenitsyn. As long as the young female director stares at the older female, it is supposed to be somehow much more more advanced and progressive than an older male director and the bunch of male viewers staring at the starlet. Most of the people bemoan old age and loneliness and alienation, this film – rather cynically if I may say so -- glorifies it, while its makers laugh all the way to Oscars in a true Hollywood, or, a true Solzhenitsyn, style.
As much as Nomadland is the ode to the myth of frontier, The Truffle Hunters is the ode to the vanishing way of life. A hunt, a dog, nature, elements. One film wants to stay rooted, get deeper into a soil, as a truffle mushroom does, as opposed to another, that wants to remain a rolling stone, forever twisting and turning similar to a hero of a Russian folk, “Kolobok,” -- a rolling pancake that escapes anyone who tries to eat it: “With each animal Kolobok sings a song in which he explains, "I got away from Grandmother, I got away from Grandfather, and I will certainly get away from you."
But besides being rooted or uprooted and following one culture’s calls, there is something disturbing about American film, as opposed to the Italian one. We all know that the old guys in the Truffle’s film are oddballs. They pursue their impossible dreams and that’s their choice. They have enough land or income to lead a rather different life. What they do is perfectly voluntarily. They are Don Quixotes of sorts, pursuing their visions and leaving their small villages, estates, or families behind. Nomadland tries to give us a semblance of this option, but it is not there. We are faced with a lot of women who lost their partners, their jobs, their homes. They turn the necessity into virtue, but Don Quixote evicted from his estate and forced to roam the dusty roads of Castile and sleep in homeless shelters is not a Don Quixote we admire.
What’s next for the makers of Nomadland? A film about the homeless of Los Angeles and the beauty of living in a tent, peeing in the streets, while admiring the sunset in the desert?
Each man or woman we see in these films is a real character. They have faces rather than masks. They have their history, their dignity, their pride, and independence. Still, I can’t help but feel that The Truffle Hunters is a wistful and noble look at the romantic past, and the vanishing way of looking at the world and oneself. While the Nomadland is a subtle advertisement for Gulag. Come to Siberia and be all you can be. There should be more to an old age, than a broken van, and a view of a mountain ridge. This sunset at the mountain ridge might be better than a view from a caged window in the old-folks home -- but not by much.
