On old age, regret, redemption, living, hope, despair, forgiveness, and recompense.
The film on which my daughter worked in 2016-2017 was Graves, starring Nick Nolte and Sela Ward. I noticed yesterday that the film is on the Roku channel…so I watched both seasons with fresh eyes. I was twice on the set with my daughter to watch filming and met a few of the actors. That was fun and enlightening…good films rely on far more than good actors, writers, and directors. They rely on a dedicated and expert crew. I saw that. A good film also relies on its significance to broad audiences.
But the filming took place just as Donald J Trump and MAGA Republicans began their first term in power, just as our collective minds rose in horror to the realization that the Republican party had withdrawn from its place in rational, empathetic conservatism to become a world-class criminal enterprise. Watching the film with fresh eyes means that an audience will easily make connections, however flimsy, skewed, or factual…connections to our current national situation. But the connections that writer Joshua Michael Stern made are far more personal to the audience than mere political analyses. Of these personal connections I will write today.
Nolte plays former President Richard Graves in the film, a Republican who twenty-five years after his two terms in office wakes up to the consequences of his decisions. He is aging quickly while his son and daughter in their immaturity add to family disfunction, while his wife finds new life and energy in a potential run for the Senate. Secret Service agents, isolation, withdrawal, and advancing age prevent the connections to life that he once enjoyed and controlled. He stares at the collections in his private study and adjoining living areas – all remind him that he lived large and powerful in a distant past. Although his wife, played by Sela Ward, is affectionate and tends to his needs with special love and care, she has kept in close contact with former colleagues and friends. Much younger than her husband, she does not feel the don’t fence me in (Cole Porter’s song) prison in which he struggles to maintain relevance. The husband and wife face permanent separation if their personal desires fail to meld.
In the ensuing weeks of President Graves’ emotional battle with losses, he also wakes to the consequences of his decisions, not only the decisions he made while in the Oval Office but decisions about his children’s lives over thirty years. Several right wing policy decisions which we encounter in the film are about immigration and deportation, nuclear arms, war, counterterrorism, LGBTQ rights, racism, Indigenous rights, and family values. The film provides a fair but skewed account of the Republican party’s responsibility in these issues, only quietly alluding to the Democratic party’s collusion. For example, scenes in which First Lady Graves participates in political donor pleas suggest that both political parties seek the approval and dollars of America’s wealthy elite.
Former President Grave sets himself on a rueful journey, encountering the lives and thinking of people that he and his wife had excluded since their first foray into politics. They challenge his thinking and his past actions. Hippies, bikers, small farmers, immigrants, refugees, poor workers, protestors, young people sans generational wealth who struggle to gain their footing, his son who returns from the war in Afghanistan, his daughter whose immaturity and addictions lead to divorce and a return to her parents’ home – All these people contort America’s image which he had defended and on which he had built right wing policies. He thought, “But I was doing what I knew was right for the country” and formed a new thought, “How do I fix the problems I created?”
He started his last chapter on defense and turned to offense. This is the most important part of the story. While POTUS, Richard Graves was powerful, unapologetic, ultra-confident in his beliefs and abilities, a loner who relied on himself – a “Cowboy” as he was known. Twenty-five years later and facing “perhaps only five more good years,” he is regretful, morose, sad, flailing, forgetful, and unsure of his beliefs.
However, the story does not end with President Graves on an apology tour. He does not despair into a state of denial or oblivion. He rallies himself with courageous determination to right the wrongs and become The Helper.
This is our takeaway. We are fortunate to live into old age. But our fortune is not about comfortable retirement, rest, good health, routine, protection, independence, forgiveness, or our family’s respect. Our fortune is about Awakening, aspiring to be better learners, replacing old beliefs with new ones, hoping for reconciliation, helping others because we have fewer distractions and wider opportunities, seeking new challenges because challenges fuel appetites and whet energy.
We must not give in to a solitary existence, stale or willfully ignorant thinking, comfortable satisfaction behind which we hide from challenges and people, belief that our past and fate are sealed around which we build overwhelming regrets and create our victimization.
Old age is a new chapter with new challenges. Better to say aloud, I have no guarantee of another hour, day, or decade; but I intend to live my time well and have others remember me for the good I did in the end. Better to say and commit to that than to have others remember me only for the mistakes I made.