In 2020, readers of Arts & Faith voted on their Top 25 Films about the topic of Growing Older. This topic included, but was not limited to, mortality, coming-of-age, and maturing. To read an appreciation or explanation from a voter, click on the appropriate title. Read More …
James Ivory immediately sets the tone for his film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day. In late 1950’s England, Stevens (Anthony Hopkins), head butler of over 30 years for the once thriving Darlington Hall, wanders down or peers into hallways that are Read More …
Do we really believe that wisdom, joy, peace, and courage are the fruit of old age? We may know it from saints or from special people in our own lives, but we probably don’t know it from the movies. Here, then, is our antidote to Read More …
As Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) aged, so did his films’ protagonists. Gone are the unformed young men of earlier decades, ripe for a jolt of enlightenment. Instead, the leads in his late films are reaping the consequences of decades of character formation, either condemned Read More …
British filmmaker Mike Leigh finds the extraordinary in everyday circumstances, focusing on characters who navigate difficult emotional tasks with a sense of optimism and hope. The happy couple in Another Year is Tom and Gerri Hepple (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen), an elderly pair who love food, Read More …
As the sun sets on a chapter of history, a beautiful estate in the countryside outside of Paris becomes the setting for this intricate meditation on art and history: What makes an object valuable? How is globalization changing our values? How is it changing the Read More …
Until very late in Yasujiro Ozu’s film Tokyo Story, there is no crisis more dramatic than some uncomfortable silences. So what is it that makes this film one of the most revered dramas ever crafted? It’s the simplest of stories: An elderly couple—Shukichi and Tomi—drop in Read More …
This beautifully animated short film begins before World War I in the deserted and desertified foothills of the Alps in southern France, where the narrator, on a hiking excursion, meets the peasant Elzéard Bouffier. Having lost his family, Bouffier has decided to dedicate the rest Read More …
Agnès Varda tells as much about her own experiences and feelings growing older as she does about the history and practice of gleaning, an occupation that has itself grown old. By placing herself as the documentary’s ultimate gleaner, she collects wisdom about her subjects, her Read More …
Bark Cooper, one of the two elderly protagonists of Leo McCarey’s MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW (1937), boasts of one and only one accomplishment in his life. When he was a young man, Bark won the heart of his wife Lucy over a rival who became Read More …