I’ve just spent another weekend at the home I grew up in, assisting my mother with all kinds of things, as she now begins the next season of her life mostly alone in that house, my father having passed on after their 57 years together.
A heavy shadow of grief lies over this Northeast Portland property where my parents have lived since I was four years old. Those clouds occasionally part to remind us that my father’s severe sufferings — the hearing loss, the loss of speech and language, the loss of memories, the increasing confusion and distress — are finally over. Still, that awareness of a void, an absence, an unresolvable problem, is there waiting for us at every turn.
Quotidian tasks still need to be done. Their printer is not working, and the processes of choosing a new one, uninstalling old programs, and installing new ones, must be carried out in a language of today’s technology that my mother does not speak. Firewood must be stacked. Outdoor faucets must be covered to protect them from the freeze. Documents must be scanned and emailed to the funeral home. And on and on.
We need each other. We need to be there for one another. We need to consider the daunting challenges of those who depend on younger and more physically agile people in order to accomplish what must be accomplished. We need to give our love and attention (are those not the same thing?) to those whose world is fading into the past, whose physical capacities are diminishing, whose intellects are not equipped to keep up with the rapidly changing demands of being connected to basic human services, pleasures, and necessities.
In the last few weeks, I have met husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, grandfathers, and grandmothers who are now relying on healthcare workers in hospitals and foster care homes. I have met nurses, doctors, and foster care hosts. I have seen sufferings that have been devastating to behold, even though I know that they are common; there is something about being there, in person, and paying up-close attention, that will shake you and restore your perspective to What Is Really Going On Here in this fragile world. There is something about showing up, holding those cold and feeble hands, and watching the courage and the diligence and the professionalism of good healthcare workers that will humble you and show you who the Real Heroes of the world are. As Karin Bergquist of Over the Rhine often reminds the band’s audiences — we give standing ovations to the wrong people in our world. Many (if not most) of the world’s greatest heroes are doing hard and often thankless work behind closed doors.
Going through this, I find that I have been given new lenses to see things more clearly. And now even the most incidental recent experiences seem different to me.
For example, Thelma.
Here’s a film that pays loving, good-humored attention to characters who are usually ignored. It celebrates them. It shows us how manic, how irresponsible, how foolish we can be when we lose touch with our elders and those who need our help. It shows us how they, attending to urgent life-and-death needs, are often seeing things more clearly than we are. And yet, it is not a grim or dire film. It is a joy.
I recommend that you and your family visit Thelma this Christmas.
An early draft of this review was originally published on June 29, 2024,
at Give Me Some Light on Substack, months before it appeared here.
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Very few of us have had family members kidnapped, but look at how many moviegoers rush to theaters year after year to watch the latest action thriller about a father hunting down the crooks who took his daughter!
Now… raise your hands: How many of you have been frustrated by scam artists trying to trick you into giving them money? Okay — that’s a lot of hands! Wouldn’t you like to see a movie about somebody who’s mad as hell, who can’t take it anymore, and is ready to hunt down a predatory caller? I have good news for you. There’s a movie in theaters right now, scheduled for prime summer showtimes, that you’re going to love.
I don’t think I’ll stir up any controversy if I claim that youth, big-name celebrities, and action rule at the summertime box office. Having said that, I can hardly believe what I get to recommend — with confidence! — as a sure thing for big-screen entertainment here in the fourth week of June.
Thelma, the first feature written and directed by Josh Margolin, stars 94-year-old June Squibb as a widow who gets scammed online and decides to hunt down the criminal trickster. Okay — she’s not exactly Tom Cruise, and this isn’t anything like Bad Boys 2. But trust me, it’s a joy. If enough people go see this, word of mouth will spread fast, and it just might end up the sleeper hit of the summer.
You’ll notice that I used the “E” word in those opening paragraphs. I’m more inclined to movies that inspire the “A” word — art — than I am to rave about entertainment. And yes, sure, both words are fairly flexible. I tend to think of art films as films that are about much more than the surface-level narrative suggests; thus, they require close observation to both style and substance, asking us to do some measure of interpretation. Art films tend to reward multiple viewings with new discoveries, and they inspire challenging discussions. If I lean on the term entertainment, I’m probably thinking of a film that is more focused on satisfying the audience once, with easy pleasures that signal we can, to some degree, “turn off our brains” and relax. They’re fun as they play, but we’re probably not still reflecting on and interpreting them a week later.
Thelma strikes me as above-average entertainment — a good time for just about anybody who buys a ticket. The characters are endearing, the cast is a pleasure to watch, the jokes are strong, and the narrative arc has enough surprises and delights to send everybody home happy.
But there is an art to executing formulaic entertainment. And Thelma is artfully made. The formula is familiar: Someone has been harmed, and so they vow to carry out some vigilante justice. This leads to a quest, the help of a sidekick, episodic adventures that involve risk and cunning, and eventually a climactic confrontation with a villain.
But there are unique variations on that formula here. Thelma is not a typical action hero. She is bound by almost all of the limitations that anybody in their 90s would typically be.
Thelma is played by June Squibb, who turned 93 as Margolin was making this movie, and while she found her way to stardom late in life, she’s racked up quite an impressive record of screen credits, and she’s showing off her big movie-star charisma here. Squibb makes us believe, she makes us care, and she makes us laugh — a lot. I wouldn’t be surprise if this wins her a second Oscar nomination next winter. (Stick around for the closing credits to spend a few moments with the real-life Thelma who was the inspiration for Squibb’s character.)
While Thelma and her grandson watch a recent Mission: Impossible movie in Thelma’s opening minutes and comment on Tom Cruise’s remarkable athleticism considering his age, a feat of action-hero strength for Thelma might just be riding a scooter a few miles, or navigating a crowded antique shop where it’s easy to knock something over. And while Ethan Hunt’s latest adventure involves outwitting extremely sophisticated A.I. technology, Thelma, grieving the loss of her husband but enjoying her first experience of living alone, is taking her first steps in trying to catch up with a world of technology has left her far, far behind.
Almost all of us have a family member or two who, like Thelma, need our help in carrying out the most basic functions at a computer. (I recently introduced a close relative to the concept of attaching a file to an email, and pretty much blew their mind.) But I’ll bet the challenge has never seemed exciting — for them, or for us. And yet, all of this unfolds onscreen with playful Mission: Impossible conventions, including a musical score by Nick Chuba that riffs on that action franchise’s familiar motif.
Another clever reference to a legendary action franchise comes in the casting of the late Richard Roundtree — the original Shaft. Roundtree, in his final big-screen role (he died in October last year), is the perfect partner for Squibb, and their chemistry is substantial. Roundtree plays Ben, a retirement-center resident who has a lot of history with Thelma and who is quickly, if unintentionally, recruited to be her sidekick in this cross-town venture to regain Thelma’s stolen funds and teach the offender a lesson.
The movie finds another layer of comedy, tension, and thoughtfulness in the parallel action of Thelma’s family as they search for her.
Thelma’s grandson Danny (played by Fred Hechinger) is so devoted to his grandmother that she might be his best friend, and as the adventure unfolds we come to understand why: Danny is struggling to figure himself out, to learn how he can be useful to the world in view of his formidable insecurities. He knows his grandmother loves him unconditionally and believes in his capacity to get unstuck and find his way in the world.
Danny’s parents are played by Parker Posey and Clark Gregg, and while they may not have much chemistry together, they both contribute significant manic energy to the crisis of Thelma’s “disappearance” to make the situation progressively worse — and funnier.
As I found all of this more entertaining than thought-provoking, I have to admit that Anne and I had a meaningful conversation as we walked through a park after the movie. It isn’t often that movies challenge us to think about and share our expectations about aging, what we suspect we need to learn and prepare for, and what kinds of decisions we might make if we’re ever faced with the challenges that face Thelma and Ben in these scenarios. (I think we’re probably too sharp to be scammed, but how much longer will be we fit enough to navigate long stairways?)
So, here’s hoping that Thelma inspires more movies about geriatric heroes! The daunting complications that the elderly face can be as frightful as those facing any action hero, and the strengths that such struggles can reveal in them can make them inspiring role models. The more attention that creative filmmakers give the later seasons of our lives, the more we’re likely to think about them, talk about them, and be ready for them. What’s more, we might be inspired to show more love and respect to our elders who are probably laughing at this movie’s jokes with a deep and bittersweet recognition.
Here’s what I wrote on Letterboxd as soon as I got home from this good time at the movies:
Top Ten Flash Reviews I Considered Posting While the Credits Rolled
10.
A great movie for the revealing post-movie conversations you will have with whomever you see it with.
9.
It’s just a hunch, but I’m calling it: The guy who plays Dumbass Michael is going to be a huge movie star someday, and we’ll point back to this the way we point back to Harrison Ford in Apocalypse Now and say, “Wow. Look at that guy. Who could have imagined what he would become.”
8.
Parker Posey’s record is still perfect.
7.
R.I.P., Richard “Shaft” Roundtree. You made a noble choice for your last film!
6.
There’s no such thing as a perfect movie, but for a straight-down-the-middle crowd-pleaser of a comedy, this knows exactly what it wants to be, achieves that, and does so with an extra measure of grace and more moments of visual cleverness than I expected.
5.
Thumbs down to the 60-something dude in front of me who sulked on the way out: “Wayyy too sleepy for me. They had the wrong editor. It needed to move much faster.” My dude, could you possibly be farther from getting this movie? Who hurt you, man?
4.
Starey Garey = best non-speaking role in years.
3.
See it for the added layer of unintentional comedy coming from some of the elderly audience members who think they’re in their living rooms and carry on loud conversations up and down the row, and shake their popcorn barrels loudly to see if anything’s left, and very clearly relate to everything Thelma’s struggling with and thus find every joke about aging twice as funny as you do. (And you know full well you’ll laugh harder at this movie as you get older, too.)
2.
Along the same lines: Biggest laugh of the movie for me came after about three minutes of Thelma obviously being scammed over the phone — the scene that kick-starts the plot, and the premise that has been clear in every blurb and every trailer — and at the end of that scene, the woman in front of me loudly gasps and announced to the theater: “That was a scam!!”
1.
”I think I know her!”