If you’re bummed by the long political season, the endless war and the seeming stagnation of the soul — it’s easy to feel mired in what Yeats called “the foul rag and bone shop” of the human spirit — then you owe yourself the two-hour vacation provided by “Young@Heart.”
There’s not much to it, really, which is another way of saying: There’s a whole lot to it. It’s just a festival of good behavior, a little talent, a lot of work, and a kind of commitment to the idea that shows must go on, individuals must sacrifice for the whole, and that doing good is better, though harder, than talking good.
It follows a choir of generally peppy septuagenarians from Northhampton, Mass., through six weeks of practice, trial, tribulation and performance. The gimmick that has propelled the group Young@Heart to a small measure of fame is that rather than sing standbys such as “Adelaide” and “As Time Goes By,” they’re rockers, rappers and punkers.
So the movie generates a lot of humor when Dora Morrow dodders to the microphone and lets out with a James Brown’s famous cry of life, “I feel good.” When Fred Knittle, breathing oxygen out of a portable tank through a tube that runs to his nose, blasts out a version of a famous Cold Play tune, or when Stan Goldman, who looks like a cross between Don Rickles and Alan Arkin and is a confessed opera buff, answers Morrow with a “Yeeee-oww,” guess what? You’re the one who feels good.
The documentarian is a Brit, Stephen Walker, whose brisk, ironic style of narration and frank inclusion of himself in the observations contributes mightily to the enterprise. It’s also helped by his honesty. Though the gimmick sounds, well, gimmicky, Walker is still a truth-teller and not one to look away from reality. Here are old people in all the magnificence of their elderliness: crusted with barnacles, rogue hairs, strange bruises, splotches, sags and discoloration, the movie doesn’t pretend like getting old is any fun.
But it’s about the transcendental power of — well, yes, music, and each of these folks, with a background in music, has a talent whose expression is a fuel to survive. But in a larger sense it’s about belief. They believe. Singing in the chorus gives meaning to life; living for the whole and not the self, the love of comrades of the same circumstance and situation, that’s what keeps them alive.
And of course the final honesty of the film is its attitude toward death. The movie chronicles the passing of two members at inopportune times, and the hole it opens in this little society, the pain, the grief. But almost like soldiers, the survivors see the deaths not as a tragedy but as an obstacle: It only makes them tougher.
Walker makes a couple of bad decisions. Three times, he stops the movie’s progress and does a little MTV-style video with the old guys set against ironic, comic backgrounds, in frank imitation of the commercial product. He’s not really a stylist, however, and none of these sequences rises to the level of honesty and inspiration the more straightforward documentarian sequences achieve. And it has to be said that the move has a little of the subversive to it. Now that everything is sacred, nothing can be laughed at, but the movie is so up-with-people-y it gives you a little disguise by which you can have a good crow at the expense of the infirmities and bewilderments of age without being considered a boor by those around you, because they’re laughing, too.
What I liked best about “Young@Heart” wasn’t its portrayal of the elderly with a song in their heart, but of a middle-aged guy doing his darndest. If there’s a hero in the film, it’s Bob Cilman, who directs the choir, a mid-50s professional musician without an ounce of sentimentality. He just works himself to death, he gives them so much, and you never feel him preening or posing. The camera doesn’t pick up a whisper of vanity and no sense that he ever entertains the thought it’s really about him. Few enough of those around anymore.
I just finished this book and found it very well written and researched. 
