How movies are teach­ing us all to stop wor­ry­ing about grow­ing old

“Did you take a piss today?” asks Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) to film direc­tor Mick Boyle (Har­vey Kei­t­el) in Pao­lo Sorrentino’s sump­tu­ous new film, Youth. ​“Four drops,” comes the appro­pri­ate­ly dry response. This brief comedic exchange between friends epit­o­mis­es the film’s fas­ci­na­tion with grow­ing old, not just in the psy­cho­log­i­cal sense – Boyle is work­ing on a script titled ​‘Life’s Last Day’; Ballinger is told he is apa­thet­ic about the present – but phys­i­cal­ly, too.

Youth isn’t alone. In the past decade, numer­ous direc­tors have turned a keen eye towards the issue of age­ing. We’ve seen Judi Dench and Mag­gie Smith take up res­i­dence at the Best Exot­ic Marigold Hotel, Michael Haneke tack­le the tragedy of los­ing one’s spouse in Amour and Pixar explore a sim­i­lar theme in Up. Some films have tak­en a more icon­o­clas­tic approach, like 2015’s Grand­ma, in which Lily Tom­lin deliv­ers the mem­o­rable line: ​“I like being old, young peo­ple are stu­pid.” While oth­ers have opt­ed for a more melan­choly route, as poet­i­cal­ly expressed by Julie Christie in 2006’s Away From Her: ​“I think I may be begin­ning to disappear.”

So why the sud­den influx of old­er folks on-screen? Could it sim­ply be a response to a shift­ing moviego­ing demo­graph­ic? Last August Vari­ety ran a piece enti­tled ​‘Why Spe­cial­ty Films Are Going Gray,’ in which Brent Lang explained that those over 50 com­prise one of the few grow­ing mar­kets. Back in 2011 The New York Times glee­ful­ly pro­claimed that the ​‘Gray­ing Audi­ence Returns to Movies,’ a view echoed the fol­low­ing year in a Guardian arti­cle that out­lined ​‘How old­er view­ers are res­cu­ing cin­e­ma.’ As stu­dios scram­ble to cater for the ever fick­le 18 – 34 mar­ket, films star­ring grown men and women that fea­ture lit­tle to no CGI are becom­ing big business.

This trend – let’s call it the rise of the ​“com­ing-of-age­ing” film – is not entire­ly a new (look no fur­ther than Harold and Maude, A Trip to Boun­ti­ful and On Gold­en Pond) but it is most cer­tain­ly a thriv­ing one. Recent films like Venus, Nebras­ka, Quar­tet and last year’s Mr Holmes adhere to a famil­iar com­ing-of-age struc­ture, except that rather than mark­ing the tran­si­tion between child­hood and adult­hood, these films tack­le the pro­tag­o­nists’ new­found (or new­ly acknowl­edged) old age, giv­ing way to extend­ed rumi­na­tion on issues of romance, pol­i­tics and sexuality.

Take Brett Haley’s 2015 film I’ll See You in My Dreams, which fol­lows wid­ow Car­ol Petersen (Blythe Dan­ner). Her friends (played by June Squibb, Rhea Perl­man and Mary Kay Place) have all moved into an old folks’ home, a liv­ing arrange­ment they con­tend could very well be the solu­tion to Carol’s nonex­is­tent prob­lems. Or Andrew Haigh’s mar­i­tal dra­ma 45 Years, where Kate and Geoff Mer­cer (Char­lotte Ram­pling and Tom Courte­nay) are forced to recal­i­brate their mar­riage after a sud­den rev­e­la­tion. Or Mike Mills’ Begin­ners, in which Christo­pher Plummer’s Hal, upon turn­ing 75, decides to come out to his son and attempts to live his life anew.

Per­haps the most inter­est­ing things about these films is that, while there’s a nec­es­sary focus on look­ing back – at one’s own life and mis­takes – these sto­ries are pre­dom­i­nant­ly for­ward-look­ing. What’s more, by show­ing sex after 70, these films demon­strate a com­mit­ment to depict­ing real life that is so often lack­ing in more main­stream releases.

Rhea Perl­man has sug­gest­ed that the emer­gence of the com­ing-of-age­ing film may well be due to the fact that baby boomers have now crossed over into mid­dle age. ​“There’s going to be a demand for more films like [I’ll See You in my Dreams],” she told The Hol­ly­wood Reporter upon the film’s release. ​“How many shoot ​’em ups and explo­sions can you tolerate?”

The ques­tion may have been rhetor­i­cal but its answer is per­haps bleak­er than Perl­man could antic­i­pate. It’s not all seri­ous, though. Along­side the more sedate dra­mas men­tioned above, we’ve had come­dies and action flicks fea­tur­ing sea­soned movie stars crack­ing wise and kick­ing ass well into their old age. Lily Tom­lin in Grand­ma, Robert De Niro in Dirty Grand­pa, Clint Eastwood’s Gran Tori­no, Michael Caine in Youth and Har­ry Brown and Sylvester Stallone’s The Expend­ables series – not to men­tion Har­ri­son Ford’s return to both the Indi­ana Jones and Star Wars fran­chis­es – all sug­gest that there is a grow­ing demand for old­er actors who still know how to have fun.

To para­phrase Caine’s char­ac­ter in Youth, lev­i­ty may be both a temp­ta­tion and a per­ver­sion, but it’s become a wel­come con­tra­dic­tion to the cel­e­bra­tion of youth­ful­ness that has dom­i­nat­ed the film indus­try for so long.