To what extent should a documentary reveal its opinion of its subject? At the extreme end of the spectrum, where advocacy art such as 2015’s Making a Murderer resides, investigative filmmakers may occasionally win hearts and minds but risk compromising veracity in their zeal to promote a cause. Other nonfiction projects, such as 2018’s Free Solo and last year’s Boys State, maintain a more neutral perspective, allowing viewers to form their own judgments. Balancing awkwardly between these two poles is Some Kind of Heaven, a new feature from debut documentarian Lance Oppenheim. An examination of the Villages, Florida, a retirement community described by one occupant as “God’s waiting room,” the film plainly holds its subject in disdain. What is less clear is precisely why that happens to be the case.
Home to 130,000 seniors, 20,000 of whom are single and persist in varying states of randiness, the Villages is not without its quirks and curiosities. Residents march in drum corps, rock the night away in discotheques, and chase perfection with the precision drill team (think synchronized swimming but with golf carts). Other entertainment options include tambourine ensembles, interpretive dance sessions set to Christmas music, and club meetings for the numerous residents named “Elaine.” Accompanying Oppenheim’s archly shot footage of life in the Villages is a series of breathless testimonials. “This is nirvana,” one householder declares as happy oldsters caper and flirt in the background. “Where else can you party seven days a week?” another asks, clearly determined to die on the dance floor.
Developed in the 1980s and meant to evoke the tight-knit communities of midcentury America, the Villages is an exercise in artifice of a type that is almost perfectly calibrated to offend the cultural gentry. Not for nothing does founder Harold Schwartz label his creation a “Disney World for retirees.” To the extent that Some Kind of Heaven intends merely to expose an idiosyncratic mode de vie, it achieves a certain malevolent brio and is entertaining enough on a superficial level. What the movie lacks is any particular perspective beyond its dismay that, in an otherwise unremarkable corner of central Florida, a group of people has chosen to live in a way that others might find odd.
Serving as representatives of that group are the four residents whose stories provide Oppenheim with a modest narrative. For Anne and Reggie, a move to the Villages represents a chance to explore new interests after 47 years of marriage. For Dennis, a van-dwelling California bachelor, the community is a source of seducible women of means, one of whom may eventually desire a live-in companion. Barbara, a widow whose finances preclude a return to her native Massachusetts, is lonely without her husband but increasingly open to new love. Together, this quartet gives Some Kind of Heaven a plot on which to hang its attention between shots of kung fu, pickleball, and elderly canoers crossing man-made lakes.
Where Oppenheim’s film gets into trouble is in its failure to connect the adventures of its protagonists to anything that is peculiar to the Villages. Dennis’s attempt to live in a parking lot, for instance, produces a predictable neighborhood drama, but such a spat could have played out in any residential area in which wealthy ladies abound. While it is moderately amusing to watch Barbara bat her eyes at a golf cart salesman, such late-in-life romances happen all the time, and not only in heavily themed retirement villages.
By far, the most profound example of this phenomenon is the saga of Anne and Reggie, which begins in comedy but quickly approaches tragedy. A regular user of marijuana and LSD, Reggie likes “stimulating [himself] with drugs” but is gradually losing his “sense of reality.” When police arrest him for possession of cocaine, the resulting legal process threatens to strip Reggie of his freedom and end his marriage of almost five decades.
To be sure, Reggie’s story is a gripping one and will remind some viewers of the Sara Goldfarb plot in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (Aronofsky is among Some Kind of Heaven’s producers.) Yet for all its contemporary relevance and complexity, Reggie’s struggle simply has nothing to do with the Villages, much less with any psychic turmoil inherent to that place. The result of this fragmentation is a documentary that isn’t sure what it wants to be. If Oppenheim’s goal is to present kooky images for mockery, he has accomplished his mission. If the point is to get to the bottom of something, a spiritual crisis among America’s senior citizens, for example, the work is considerably less successful.
Indeed, one wonders if Some Kind of Heaven’s visual cynicism is itself to blame for the movie’s failure to plumb its intriguing source material to the full. So in love is Oppenheim with his own footage that he neglects to explain why it matters, a decision that leaves a void at the heart of what could have been an excellent film. As things stand, audiences are left with little besides Anne’s hard-won realization that “everybody’s life here in the Villages is not perfect all the time.” Wise words. But did we really need a documentary to convey that message?
Graham Hillard teaches English and creative writing at Trevecca Nazarene University.
