YOUNG@HEART’s filmmaker, Stephen Walker, settles the question of whether 70-, 80-, and 90-year-old singers can cover punk, rock, and alternative music with the very first scene of his exhilarating documentary. In it, 92-year-old Eileen Hall is getting to the heart of “Shall I Stay Or Shall I Go” by The Clash with a verve and an emotional precision that most people half a century younger could only dream of. By the end of the song, which she invests with the immediacy of a monologue, the audience is on its feet begging her to stay. They’re right. As Walker’s film covers the tumultuous seven-week rehearsal period for the chorus’ next show, Alive and Well, it’s a chance to get to get to know some of them as individuals, find out what makes them tick, individually and collectively, and agonize with them over the problems of getting through a song that repeats the word “can” over seventy times.
The iconoclastic program material is the brainchild of the choir’s director, Bob Cilman, a man with the hooded, baleful eyes and clipped words of Humphrey Bogart. When he first springs “Schizophrenia” by Sonic Youth on the chorus, you understand why. The bafflement on both sides is as piquant as it is unsurprising. Halfway through rehearsals, when asked how it’s going, he looks straight into the camera and replies with a straight face that is devoid of irony that he’s in hell.
Walker homes in on the essential truths of his subjects. There is frailty of body to these game choristers, but a vigor of spirit that is insistent, dynamic, and powerful enough to leap off the screen with the impact of a thunderbolt. And not just when Dora Parker Morrow, a tiny woman unsteady on her feet, stands at the mic and belts out “I Feel Good” in a way that makes it a spiritual affirmation as well as a demand for everyone to get on their feet. It’s also when Lenny, a man with iffy eyesight, drives himself from one place to anther without incident. And it’s especially when Hall flirts frankly and outrageously with the film crew come for a look at her home life. The glint in her eye is a delight to behold.
That spirit is there even in the face of bad news. Wnen Cilman informs the group that there has been a health setback for one of their number, he follows it up by bantering with one of the members, asking her if it’s true that she’s had a near death experience and what was it like. She replies, laughing, there was a light and that she ran the other way, which is when everyone else starts laughing as well. After long lifetimes of ups and downs, sickness and health, joys and sorrows, these are people who have enough perspective to understand how to have a good time and how to savor living in the moment. Here is revealed the true and unimpeachable gift of age and it is not just a revelation in this context, it is also way cool.
YOUNG@HEART has more than its share of touching even heartbreaking moments as well. These are people for whom the end of life is all too near. Yet, one of the most memorable is also the most unexpected. For all the health problems, sudden deaths, and renditions of songs such as “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Prince or David Bowie’s “Golden Years” that take on profound (the former) and playful (the latter) layers of meaning, it is a prison concert that deals the most unexpected emotional wallop. As the chorus warbles for twenty-somethings for whom these are staples on their playlists, those kids are visibly moved as the shades of meaning hit home. It’s the way that they shed tears with an utter lack of self-consciousness, as though there is a core of humanity that is being tapped and it’s healing. Don’t be surprised if the same thing happens to you, no matter what your age or your playlist.
Your Thoughts?