Venus

I understand that it is self-flagellating to watch the Academy Awards every year. The movies I love are rarely nominated and the winners are frequently the least-deserving- I don't know what the hell Academy members were thinking last year with Crash. I'm going to be good, though, and not bitch about this year's performance. There are plenty of snarky comments to be found on the Internet and in print. My issues with this institution go so far back, it's not worth the breath. I've got a friend-of-a-friend who is an Academy member, however, and that means that for 2 weeks of the year, I get to watch half the films I kinda wanted to see but wasn't interested enough to pay $10.75 for the privilege. This year, the movie I heard the least about was the one I enjoyed the most - Venus.

I knew that Peter O'Toole was up for an Academy Award for his role in Venus but heard little about the film. Peter O'Toole plays Maurice, an aged actor in the twilight of his career. Remembered mostly for his glamorous past and forgotten by the younger generation, he spends his twilight years playing dying grandfathers in films and wandering to the theater or the diner with actor-friends of his generation. The film has a smart, touching plot between Maurice and a young, street-smart woman who he calls "Venus", yet that is the least-interesting aspect of the film. Venus is a portrait of being old - how it feels to be old, how old people are treated and the roles that the elderly are expected to fulfill.

It never fails to amaze me how American culture (or most Western cultures, for that matter) treats it's elderly population. They are stereotyped in film and television as less-than-human children who shuffle, complain and fear change. Reality is that families and the culture largely ignores them or panders to them in condescending ways. What was natural and expected at earlier ages becomes lecherous and sinister in the later years. Somehow, elderly people are supposed to become softer, safer and less of whatever they were in their prime. I suspect it might have something to do with a contemporary fetishizing of youth combined with a terror of growing old.

Peter O'Toole does a spectacular job as the aging actor whose mind is still sharp, whose passions are still potent even as his body slowly gives way. Forrest Whittaker might have given the performance of his life in The Last King of Scotland- his Oscar acceptance speech was passionate and inspiring. However, Peter O'Toole performed an act of courage in exposing himself to the potential ridicule as a dirty old man by an audience that no longer sees him as Lawrence of Arabia or Henry II. He serves up his persona and our memories of him as a passionate, vigorous soul and uses it to expose our assumptions of what a human being should be in his/her later years. In a business based upon vanity, Peter O'Toole continues to both challenge and unsettle. He stood and delivered and I hope that I will carry half that that boldness into my later years.