Some Kind of Heaven (2020) Drinking Game
Take a Drink: for every mention or sighting of margaritas
Take a Drink: every time an old man hits on someone
Take a Drink: every time drugs are mentioned
Do a Shot: for every visit to the courtroom
Do a Shot: every time somebody mentions a Disney property in comparison to The Villages
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
When you hear “Darren Aronofsky-produced documentary”, your head is bound to go places, all of them dark. Like, best case scenario it’s about the Opioid Epidemic or something like that, right?
Or not.
Some Kind of Heaven follows several residents of the The Village, a massive retirement complex in Florida that has everything its just shy of 80,000 elderly inhabitants could ever need or want. But is this manicured, manufactured nostalgia-tinged bubble a guarantee of golden years happiness?
A Toast
Precocious documentarian Lance Oppenheim is just 24 years old, but it’s no surprise he’s caught the eye of big names even in different corners of the film industry like Aronofsky. Here he’s crafted a documentary that is undeniably beautifully shot, with an eye for crafting an interesting, information-packed, and slyly absurd image out of even the most mundane materials.
Here he’s found a place that’s uncommonly suited to those talents- a place that is more than a few times referred to as a Disneyland for retirees- a place where every effort is made to sand down the rough edges of the real world. Oppenheim finds an interesting group of residents for us to tail and examine just how well that melds with the messy inevitabilities of living.
One couple grows apart when the husband goes down a rabbithole of light-to-medium drug use and new-agey bullshit of his own devising, while a widow finds not everything is lollipops and rainbows when money isn’t not an object and the male to female ratio is skewed even further than the general population, and a non-resident lives in his van while hunting a wealthy older woman to take care of him. It’s the human condition in miniature, and surprisingly age-agnostic. These are the dramas that play out at most any age and place, despite the freshly painted facades of this community.
Beer Two
This is a tight, short 90 minute documentary, and I for one wouldn’t have minded another 10-15 minutes to broaden its scope a bit. I’m particularly interested in how race plays into the hermetic 1950s fantasy world that’s been recreated here. There’s one incredibly in shape older black man who gets a couple lines in, but I would have loved to hear what he thought about the whole of living in WASP paradise.
Verdict
Some Kind of Heaven is an engrossing human interest story that goes to prove that “growing up” is perhaps something none of us ever actually do.
