Old folks rarely find a good home onscreen

Alonso Duralde Film critic

It’s not just the glasses they hand you in the lobby that give a three-dimensional quality to Carl Fredricksen, the curmudgeonly lead character of the new animated film “Up.” The film provides a wonderful flashback of his life, introducing us to a man who’s had a decades-long appetite for adventure although, like most of us, he sacrificed his dreams of globe-trotting for the day-to-day realities of career and family.

Would that most films could be bothered to make older characters this interesting and well thought out. When it comes to mainstream movies, most characters born before World War II get shoved into one of several shallow senior citizen categories: doddering, mentorish, frisky or profane.

Off the screen, people with many years behind them run the gamut from ailing to vital, dull to fascinating, stubbornly closed-minded to adventurous and amenable to new ideas. You’d never know that, though, from the offensively dopey and reductive portrayals of the elderly in movies like “Cocoon” or “Grumpy Old Men.” (Those movies at least featured older stars in leading roles, a rarity for an industry that often sweeps you out the back door often long before you even qualify for AARP membership.)

Here are some of my favorite films about older people, featuring characters that feel like real human beings and not lazy screenwriters’ contrivances:

‘Gran Torino’ and ‘Million Dollar Baby’
Clint Eastwood flirts with cliché in his two most recent screen roles — the former’s a crusty curmudgeon who softens after befriending a troubled youngster, both wind up being wise mentors — but he wisely sidesteps the obvious to make both characters feel original and lived-in. While neither movie is afraid of sentimentality, Eastwood’s flinty portrayals of these hard-edged, seen-it-all old men keep the sap level low.

‘Driving Miss Daisy’

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Yes, this movie’s portrayal of racial politics is a little (OK, a lot) iffy, but at the heart of this hit is the relationship between a stubborn and sheltered woman (memorably portrayed by the great Jessica Tandy) and the employee (Morgan Freeman) who tolerates her excesses and subtly pushes her toward becoming a better person. The clash of these strong personalities makes for compelling viewing, and both Miss Daisy and Hoke have the kind of spine, sass and spirit that Hollywood rarely grants to older characters.

‘Alexandra’
Legendary Russian opera diva Galina Vishnevskaya stars in the title role as a woman traveling to Chechnya to visit her grandson, a captain in the army. While this drama from director Alexander Sokurov (“Russian Ark”) captures the despair and pointlessness of the Chechnyan occupation, Alexandra herself is never less than self-possessed, indefatigable and even bossy as she is faced with gun-toting soldiers. This is not a woman who suffers fools, even when surrounded by desperate men sent by their government on a fool’s errand.

‘Notes on a Scandal’ and ‘Ladies in Lavender’

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Dame Judi Dench may be in her mid-70s, but she’s got no problem playing women ready to latch on to pretty young things, even if her characters have to get a little psychotic. In her Oscar-nominated turn in “Scandal,” she sets her sights on much younger teaching colleague Cate Blanchett and can’t imagine why the two of them can’t get together. Her elderly spinster in “Lavender” feels similarly unencumbered to put the make on a sexy male Polish refugee who literally washes ashore at the home she shares with widowed sister Maggie Smith. In both films, Dench plays women who know what they want and seek it out without hesitation, chaos be damned.

‘Away from Her’
Although actress Sarah Polley was still in her mid-20s when she made her debut as a writer-director with this powerful film, it’s one of the most compelling and painfully honest film portrayals of a married couple in their twilight years. Julie Christie received a well-deserved Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a woman coping with Alzheimer’s, and in the course of her decline, we see how illness has liberated her to explore the cracks in her seemingly idyllic marriage. (Gordon Pinsent, as the husband, is no less compelling to watch.)

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