Cinema
Old times
Peter Ackroyd
On Golden Pond ('A', selected cinemas) 6 Do not let me hear of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly.' And what else is there to say after seeing Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda enact a grotesque caricature of old age in On Golden Pond? They both know all the tricks of their trade, of course, and theirs is a conventionally cinematic version of senili- ty, in which age is presented merely as a col- ourful extravagance — Gothic lettering in- stead of Times. Why do they both still do it? Do they need the money? Perhaps they are friends of the writer, Ernest Thompson, from whose play this film has been adapted. Or are they, as 1 suspect, just a couple of old hams who will play the Hollywood game until the end? I know that we are sup- posed to bow down in reverence in the face of their combined age; but that is an awkward posture at best — and actors, of all people, least deserve it.
This is a film about an elderly couple, Norman and Ethel Thayer, who have returned, perhaps for the last time, to their summer house by a lake. Here are two crot- chety but loveable old parties who are fac- ing the darkness with bravado, and who say all the appropriate things — rather in the style of a birthday card which one might buy for one's grandmother. Katharine Hep- burn exploits every nuance of her screen `image' — which is , approximately, that of a tough old bird whose heart is in the right place — by shaking and rattling like a pup- pet from Thunderbirds. 1 have always thought of Henry Fonda as rather a bore, and age, if anything, now displays the sheer characterlessness of his performance. He attempts to conceal his lack of a persona in the same manner as James Stewart — by forcing his delivery into a strangely accen- tuated whine.
Jane Fonda now enters the picture; she plays their daughter, now in her late thir- ties, who has come to celebrate Norman's 80th birthday. She brings with her a
boyfriend, a dentist from California, and his 12-year-old son, Billy who, when asked what he does outside school, replies, 'Cruise chicks'. Jane Fonda is a good ac- tress, but here she acts only as a foil for her - parents' eccentricities. Ordinary People ex- hausted the dramatic possibilities of the middle-age menopause, and both she and her boyfriend here are presented as neurotic and rather ridiculous. It is only when Billy is left alone with Norman and Ethel, for a long vacation, that the action of the film really starts.
For On Golden Pond presents a kind of Arcadia where youth and age meet, where differences are reconciled. In the orthodox version, of course, the wisdom of age softens the follies of youth. But this is the American variety: it is Billy who patronises the old couple; they spend their time wheed- ling and cajoling him into accepting them and it is only at the close of the film that he gives them his blessing. Far from being an examination of old age — which in more skilful hands it would have become — On Golden Pond is essentially a hymn to youth: not just to the flip self-satisfaction of the boy, but to those qualities of youthful innocence which old age is meant to bestow. Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda are loveable precisely because they are in the process of becoming juveniles again. This, is a primitivism, you might say, not very different from the myths of 'the Wild West' in which Henry Fonda himself once starred.
And since this is a fantasy about youth, and the qualities of youth, it evinces also an inability to face death and decay. Henry Fonda is thrown off his boat and spends hours in the freezing water: but here is Katharine Hepburn diving in to rescue him. In the next scene he has an Elastoplast on his forehead: simple, really. And when at the close of the film he suffers what appears to be a massive heart-attack, he is restored in a matter of seconds, none the worse for the experience. Death is invoked only to be dispelled by a few whimsical lines of dialogue. It is a curiously hollow spectacle: a sort of National Velvet, but with people instead of horses.
'We must all hope that Mr Thorpe doesn't apply for that .
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