Florida’s False Utopia Documentary – Deadline



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I didn’t know filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, mother !, Black Swan, The Wrestler) was attached to the documentary A kind of paradise when I sat down to watch it for this review. All I knew was this movie was about life in Florida’s retirement community, the Villages, but I soon found out that it was a much darker and twisted document than you. could not imagine it. So when Aronofsky’s name appeared in the end credits as a producer, I thought, “to Classes,’ because this movie seems to fit in with the kind of stuff he puts in his own movies, usually a darker take on the life we ​​lead.

Deadline

Aronofsky serves as a kind of guide and mentor to the true genius who made the title ironically A kind of paradise, and it would be Lance Oppenheim, a young documentary filmmaker known previously for his offbeat short films including Long-Term Parking and Happiest man in the world and here to debut. What a start! Preparing to make a film about the villages, Florida’s vast retirement community which is a self-proclaimed “utopia” and a fantasy land of housing for the elderly who are being sold an idea of ​​the “forever happy” life in their homes. golden years, Oppenheim moved in for a few months – undercover, so to speak – to stake out the territory and find angles to tell this story in a way that defies marketing materials. Soon he would discover his “cast” and, with the eye of a great filmmaker, knew that by following the key characters he found in various places in the Villages, he could tell a story of humanity in search of. the good life but in failure.

With his cameras close at hand, and somehow avoiding the suspicious eyes of the village management, he introduces us to a disparate group including married couple Anne and Reggie Kincer, married for 47 years but entering a dangerous phase where Reggie wants to. party more and experiment with drugs. as Anne’s discontent emerges. Then there is Barbara, who came to the villages for her “happily forever” with her husband, but who found it cut short when he died suddenly, leaving her to keep a full time job and chronic depression at home. About what life threw at him. Then there’s Lynn Henry, a freewheeling golf cart saleswoman and senior Jimmy Buffett fan who Barbara thinks might be her answer to renewed happiness (or not). And most interestingly, there’s Dennis Dean, a former Star Tinkerer and Villages intruder who lives out of his van and seeks out a wealthy old widow to greet him. Weaving these stories inside and out, Oppenheim creates a remarkable portrait of life after 65, the broken promises and intricacies of living still with us as we seek the American Dream in our bedtime years. from the sun.

While these particular episodes are indicative of everyone really living in this confined community is not a question; we are convinced that many residents are very satisfied to live their life in this sealed environment. But focusing on these Oppenheim Is let’s meet, he creates a fascinating palette of humanity in a documentary so real and compelling you’d swear they’re all the actors in a movie that this extraordinarily promising filmmaker completely made up – a movie Darren Aronofsky himself would have. could do. A kind of paradise, it can be for many, but it is a kind of Something otherwise for others.

Check out my video review at the link above with scenes from the film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year. Magnolia is releasing it today, from the New York Times film division, in various formats.

Do you intend to see Some kind of paradise? Let us know what you thought.



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