I fully appreciate Lance Oppenheim’s interest in humans and the choices they make, never having seen his other pieces, among one about a man who got on a cruise and stayed on cruises for twenty years.
Yet, he has a ways to go in making a doc that titillates.
Let me school you just a bit:
First, quiet is fine, but it can also be tedious, especially at the beginning of a film when you’re already a bit discombobulated. This was so quiet (here’s where you yell, HOW QUIET WAS IT?) that I dared not eat my popcorn.
A simple fix is have some type of groovy music, even ambient if you want the sounds of a golf course sprinkler (not exactly riveting) to still come through.
Second, it’s perfectly fine to zero in on three topics that intrigue you, but at least one of the three has to have more comic relief. Oppenheim chooses three depressed souls which is unfair to The Villages. Surely there are some happy folks there who could have added balance to the film.
Third, I’m sure this wasn’t made yesterday (since no one was masked up), so how about an interesting tidbit at the end about how they’re doing during the pandemic?
So, to conclude….interesting yes, imaginative, no. Probably a lot like living at The Villages.
IN HINDSIGHT, I did ponder long after about the theory that when you choose a relationship for comfort that you lose your freedom…a conflict deeply felt by the vagabond man story which was part of the trio. Certainly this also applied to the married couple as well, since her life was affected immensely by her spouse’s legal kerfluffle.
Some Kind of Heaven, Some Kind of Mediocrity
