Young @ Heart (2007)

CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND THE MOVIES

Reviewed by David A. Thomas,
Prof. of Rhetoric, Emeritus, University of Richmond[i]

Aging and Music: Young @ Heart (2007)

Don’t miss this documentary about a very special, unique rock concert. Bob Cilman’s octogenarian chorus from Northampton, Massachusetts, will knock your socks off. You will want to watch it again, for theological reasons as well as for sheer entertainment and musical enjoyment. It will serve well as a discussion topic for a casual church movie group, or for a college or seminary class in either music or pastoral ministry. Anyone who works with the very old, or who has a close relationship with an elderly relative, or even just tries to lead an amateur chorus, will be amazed by the ways in which your whole understanding of how the golden years of a person’s life could be, and probably ought to be, the best years. But that is not the purpose of the movie; that truth sneaks up on you.

The Plot. When the youthful British documentary film maker, Steven Carter, attended a concert by Cilman’s Young @ Heart on tour in London, he was struck by the improbable idea that there might be a story behind the group worth documenting. Cilman allowed him to make a film of the group as they prepared for their next annual tour. For seven weeks, Walker and his crew of four technicians came to Northampton and used their handheld digital cameras to unobtrusively track the group through their paces. The movie is mostly about the rehearsal process, and it reaches a powerful climax with a sold-out concert before its hometown audience.

Clearly, Walker began this project as a lark. During the first half of the movie, he focuses on the quirky, humorously anachronistic foibles of a few old folks trying to get their heads around young people’s lyrics and music. A lot of their repertoire, in fact, consists of exactly the kind of punk and rock music with edgy lyrics that slightly less old folks (like us?) tend to hate.[ii]

At first, Walker acts the part of a director/interviewer, injecting himself as an on-screen presence, interacting delicately with his subjects to get to what he imagines to be the punch line. He relates that 92-year old Eileen was once a Vaudeville stripper, and she still likes to flirt with the movie’s technical crew a bit. Lenny, a WWII pilot, is the only one among his group of friends who can still see well enough to drive them to their weekly rehearsals. Steve drives a racy sports car, and still enjoys a robust sex life that takes a little longer, but he says that just makes it more fun. And Stan and Dora need all seven weeks of rehearsal to learn their duet on James Brown’s “I Feel Good,” because Stan keeps forgetting the words to his solo part. Dora keeps coming in on the wrong beat. Eileen uses a thick magnifying glass to read her music; Lenny doesn’t know which side of a CD goes up. So it goes, for about the first half hour.

Walker tries to come across gently, but it is evident that as he feels his way into the subject matter of his film. His attitude towards the chorus members is subtly condescending and even a tiny bit mean.

Something begins to happen to the viewers. We are drawn deeper into the lives of these amateur singers. They become less stereotypical caricatures of geezers, and more like ourselves, more humanized. Despite their having to cope with all of the physical and mental disabilities common to their near-geriatric status, we begin to see them more as they see themselves. Especially, we see how important it is to be a part of the Young @ Heart chorus as a caring, productive community to which they belong by merit. They have to earn their right to sing in the group. They must commit to a serious musical purpose that requires hard work and discipline to be able to perform, not merely adequately, but well.

Bob Cilman, the chorus director in his mid-50s, is a tough task master. He is not afraid to play the drill sergeant to keep his troops in line. It’s a revelation to see how respectfully they respond to him. Nobody walks on eggs, in either direction. Cilman began the chorus twenty-five years ago. For several years, they sang oldie standards like “Yabba-Dabba-Doo.” Then it expanded into more challenging Broadway hit songs. The chorus members all prefer the classics and opera for their own listening pleasure. The group really began to take off when they made a VH-1 style music video of the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive,” complete with young, sexy dancers. Now, the group uses sophisticated contemporary hits exclusively, and they take their show on the road.

As Walker soon learns from his interviews, becoming old does not necessarily equate to becoming senile. While his subjects play along with his little project, they keep telling him what their singing means to them, not just as a novel pastime, but as a new, broadening horizon for their lives. At the halfway point in the movie where he begins to “get it,” Walker finally absents himself from the narrative The movie gets a lot better.

Life Lessons. There are several heart-tugging moments in the movie, because as you might expect, these folks do not have easy lives. Some years, someone in the group dies, and this is one of those years. On their way to present a dress rehearsal performance before the local jail, the assistant director stops the bus to deliver the sad, unexpected news that one of their group had died only that morning. Their live performance an hour later was truly inspired and inspiring. The convicts gave them a teary standing ovation, as did the theater audience. “The show must go on. He would have wanted us to,” takes on a whole new meaning once you understand it. “That’s the key,” said one of his friends; “Just keep on singing.”

The final section of the movie features an irrepressible 81-year old wisecracking basso profundo named Fred Knittle, who suffers from severe congestive heart failure, and who sometimes struggles to breathe with the aid of his ever-present portable oxygen tank. Fred comes back after a five-year medical hiatus from the group to perform, not his swan song, but his “ugly duckling” song, as he puts it. He was set to sing a duet with his singing partner, but then, tragically, it became necessary for him to do the song as a solo. Fred’s rendition of “Fix You,” dedicated to his friend, is by any measure the highlight of the concert, and of the movie itself.[iii]

Music Lessons. At one point in my youth, I thought that the lyrics to radio’s Top 40 songs were a good source for my philosophy of life. Admittedly, that was pretty shallow. As I have matured as a narrative rhetorician, I have come to a new, major appreciation of the importance of music as to what it means to be human. After all, Aristotle himself said that music is one of the six essential elements of tragedy, right up there with plot, character, language, the setting, and purpose. When you think about it, music is also an essential element in the rituals of worship. On a mundane, secular level, many of us use music as a sound track for at least part of our waking hours every day.

It opens your mind to a whole new dimension of how music conveys significant meanings when you watch and listen to the Young @ Heart chorus perform “Golden Years,” “Forever Young,” “Yes We Can, Can,” or “I Want to Be Sedated.” I am reminded of an incident soon after my own 92-year old mother passed away on Mother’s Day in 1988. My emotions were blindsided unexpectedly while I was driving along, and the Everly Brothers’ pop hit, “[Whenever I Want You] All I Have to Do Is Dream” came on the radio. I had to pull over because I was overwhelmed by a sudden surge of grief. Now, that simple tune no longer represents just another high school prom cover for me. How many stories of spiritual healing, even physical healing, revolve around the power of music?

Jeremy S. Begbie, the Cambridge University theologian who has just relocated to Duke Divinity School, has elevated the discussion about the possibilities of music in theology. His theory is the first truly new innovation in theological thinking about music-as-meaning that I am aware of. Begbie writes about this interpretation of music as such, not the semantic content of religious lyrics.

Music, he says, is meaningful for both the music maker and the music hearer. For the music maker, particularly, one realizes that it is a physical phenomenon with emotional effects, which is the root cause for theology’s traditional mistrust of it. Music is produced by the body, and by instruments that must be mastered and played through study and discipline. For the hearer, the basic elements of tempo and melody correspond to theological consideration of God’s view of time, and of voice. For performers, Begbie emphasizes the importance of making improvised music, which he sees as more spiritually enriching than scored music. It goes far beyond the simple truism that music arouses one’s emotions, though no doubt that is a part of it.[iv]

For the Young @ Heart chorus, all of these factors come into play. Making music is such a humanizing force within their experience. For listeners, hearing their concert carries much the same message to the Northampton community. For the audience, the movie shows us ways in which music operates within their octogenarian community. Objectively it’s somewhat like a sociological field study, witnessing how music vitalizes people’s lives, which, at their age, would otherwise be mostly ignored, catered to and humored, and treated, but hardly taken seriously.

As for me, I’ve begun taking guitar lessons.