Stephanie and I went late to see "Young at Heart," a documentary about a older adults' chorus in Northampton, Massachusetts, that sings rock songs. The documentary follows the chorus members - and some who return from illness - through practices and song selection and through a couple of performances. Watching these seniors sing songs like the Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime" and James Brown's "I Feel Good" was a hoot, but the stories of a few individual singers was really the most interesting thing. Most poignant was the performance of Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" at a jailhouse concert soon after a chorus member had taken ill (again). (Also a hoot was the amazing three essentially music videos interspersed into the movie: the one involving "Staying Alive" and bowling particularly stands out in my mind.) The movie reminded me in spots of "Number Our Days" (a documentary about Jewish older adults at a senior center in Venice beach, California [my South Florida history students and I watched it after reading the book by an anthropologist and then I visited the center itself], (about the big performance) of the recent Stones-Scorcese "Shine a Light" (see "Shine a Light" blog entry), and - yes - with its practices and performances and documentary-style reality show personal drama - of Fox TV's "American Idol" (which has lots of blog entries). Good movie, interesting stories, great performances, touching lives.
To see one of these scenes, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82mwhSyHbow
and (for a variant on the video in the movie) here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omIrLgQO9O0
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