Wising up to old age

Acouple weeks ago, I caught the new Marion Cotillard film at New York’s Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, an old movie theater in the sedate, not-so-hip Upper West Side area. Though there’s a multilevel movie house a few blocks up with its 3D theaters and piping-hot Hollywood fare, I still prefer the Lincoln Plaza, with its modest marquee and instrumental lobby music. Here, the films are as small-scale as the homemade carrot cake sold at its concession stand. This theater is also the heartland of what I’ve found to be New York’s most cultured and fascinating class: old people.

Since I began living in New York last year, one of the first things I discovered was that movies are the choice recreation of the retired. Even an article in December’s Details magazine said that the skyrocketing senior citizen population (78 million baby boomers are hitting retirement age) has led to a 67-percent increase in movie audiences 50 and up.

The 50 shades of gray hair I spotted lining up for the French film Rust & Bone affirmed this. Understandable for what the movie’s trailer proposed: an inspiring drama about a marine park whale trainer (Cotillard) trying to regain trust after a work accident leaves her legless. Awkward when the film ends up being a little more intense than that, making a slight detour into bloody underground kickboxing with room for lots of gritty sex, swinging penis shot and all.

I exited the theater in a daze, and was then startled by a light pat on my shoulder.

“So,” a sprightly old lady walking behind me said. “What did you think of the movie? You were sitting in front of me.”

 A couple shocking scenes still in my head, I told her it simply wasn’t what I expected.              

“It sure wasn’t Free Willy, was it?” she said, shaking her head as we ascended to the street. “But at least we all know how amputees have sex!”

I laughed. It was a sentiment I least expected from a frail-looking granny bundled up in dowdy knits. She introduced herself as Maryanne and told me how she always tries to sneak a movie in before meeting her daughter for dinner. “My daughter and her daughter,” she said, “are too impatient to sit through a two-hour film with subtitles. But me — all I have is time. And the best way to travel, especially at my age, is still through the movies.”

Her smile as she said goodbye was warm and motherly but behind her glasses, I could see someone decades younger: a hell-raising brunette of 25, perhaps.

In the past, I never really related well with old people. Both my grandfathers died before I was born, and my lolas always seemed so staid that family get-togethers were about getting the greeting out of the way and making a beeline for the food. I was even assigned to a nursing home by my high school’s outreach program, but all I remember of that experience is bedpans, the musty smell of old age, and walking the feeble around like I was herding cattle to slaughter.

The way I felt about old people was similar to the way I once felt about old movies. They used to sadden me because they reminded me of time long gone. Of what eventually happens to us all — old age as death’s waiting room. 

In a city that squeezes you in with all sorts of company, however, I could no longer avoid old folk. There was the golden girl who struck up a conversation at a drugstore queue, asking me about the New Yorker issue I was holding and discussing her favorite writers in the magazine. Having lunch at Lincoln Center one time, I became engrossed as the septuagenarian at the next table passionately described the importance of architecture to her bratty granddaughter. There’s also the old lady my friend met at a diner, who cussed about US politics, shared her views on contentment, and then recommended her favorite Indian restaurant and neighborhood bar. She didn’t let bad knees get in the way of a good time. 

Comedian Louis C.K. shared his old lady experience at a standup show recently. He talked about an old lady who’d fallen at the airport, from how the display gave him a “working knowledge of lingerie in the ‘20s” to the “negative speed” she moved at when he walked her to her gate. After a string of jokes on the burdens of helping an old woman, he mumbles his punch line: “We sat at her gate for two hours, then she said a bunch of stuff that changed my life and I’ll never forget her. But that’s the boring part.”

Given how voluble and inquiring the old people I’ve encountered lately are, I’ve cultivated quite an affinity for them. I have this habit of envisioning them in their younger years, as people they’ve been rather than lost. I see the wealth of years they have on me — how they have so much to give rather than nothing more to offer. I see so much youth in old age. I wish I’d realized this when I was younger.