As we all know, it is no longer socially acceptable to tell jokes
about or make fun of racial, ethnic or religious groups, women,
homosexuals, disabled people or drunks — which pretty much
depletes the stock of the old-fashioned jokesmith’s materials. It
was a point made a few years ago on The Simpsons when
Krusty the Klown tried out his “Me velly solly” Chinese joke,
obviously dating from the 1950s or earlier, on an adult audience
and found that he wasn’t funny anymore. It has long been apparent
that the only safe targets in the movies and popular culture are
Christians, white guys, and stupid people — preferably white
guys who are also Christian and stupid. But lately I have begun
to wonder — rather uneasily, as my own age advances into its
autumnal phase — if it will not soon be the case that the old
are going to be seen as fair game.
Of course, they (we?) cannot help being old any more than members
of the now-protected minorities can help being what they are. But
the old may have to forfeit the protection these other, more
favored groups are afforded if only because there are getting to
be so many of them — and because young people will soon be
waking up to the dirty trick their elders have played on them by
running up astronomical debts while refusing to breed enough
future earners to pay the debts off. The growing acceptance of
euthanasia may give these selfish old codgers less to worry about
than the acid-tongues of comedians yet unborn who know they owe
their 50 or 60 percent tax rates to grandpa’s propensity to
borrow and spend like a drunken sailor — no offense to drunken
sailors — in pursuit of the quaint utopian superstitions of
now-enfeebled baby-boomers.
If my crystal ball is not malfunctioning, an early indication of
what is to come may be found in John Crowley’s Is Anybody
There? Certainly, the old folks get it in the neck in this
movie, which has its moments but eventually sort of peters out.
The one thing it really has going for it is the wonderful child
actor Bill Milner who is here every bit as adorable as he was in
last year’s Son
of Rambow, or as the equally cute Freddie Highmore was
in Finding
Neverland a few years ago. What all three of these
movies have in common is the juxtaposition of the child’s beauty,
charm, and vitality with, in one form or another, death.
Golden lads and lasses must,
Like chimney-sweepers,
come to dust.
The pathos, that is, is built in to the mise-en-scène,
so that the director really has to do very little in order to
milk it for all it is worth.
But the death in Is Anybody There? — set in semi-rural
England in 1987 — is made less personal, more theoretical than
it is in the other movies. Where the boys in those films have
each lost a father and worry about losing a mother, Ed, the boy
in Anybody, is merely surrounded by old folks in the
nursing home run by his parents. He views the frequent
visitations of death there with more sang froid than the
other boys can do — in fact, with a scientific detachment. For
Ed wants to know what happens after you die, and he sets up a
series of comical experiments to try to tap into any supernatural
manifestations that may be left around the place as the old folks
drop off their perches. Meanwhile, he’s being made to sleep in
corners and cubbyholes to make room as more of them arrive, and
his parents’ marriage is threatened by the passion of depressed
and defeated dad (David Morrissey) for teenaged Tanya (Linzey
Cocker).
Into the midst of all this there wanders the latest of the
geezers, a retired magician called Clarence (Michael Caine), who
is grieving for the loss of his wife, even though he was divorced
from her. He never had a chance to tell her he was sorry for the
infidelities that broke up their marriage, and he is inconsolable
about it. Perhaps you can see where the movie is going with this.
I wish I could say that Mr. Caine holds up his end of the double
act with the charismatic Master Milner, but I’m afraid he
doesn’t. As in others of his recent films, he seems to me to be
too much the Grand Old Man, in thrall to his own legend and
therefore playing the part of Michael Caine playing the part of
Clarence the Magician, rather than having a go at the old man
himself. It doesn’t help that Clarence becomes a figure of great
pathos and so would siphon off the emotional energy that ought to
be concentrated in the boy’s quest for meaning in death, even if
he weren’t being played by the great Michael Caine.
All the same, there are a few funny and poignant moments — most
of them owing to the collection of veteran character actors that
play the old folks, including Elizabeth Spriggs, Peter Vaughan,
Leslie Phillips, Sylvia Syms and Ralph Riach. They are the ones
who give us a foretaste of the laughter that the ga-ga gang of
new-minted oldsters will doubtless soon be affording us and,
along with Bill Milner, they make the movie (just about) worth
seeing.
