Page 29 - SeniorsToday October

deteriorates till she is barely able to move.
Georges looks after her as best as he can,
with some help from nurses, but the
tragedy of age, helplessness and loneliness
leads him to smother Anne to death, and
later dies too. The neighbours complain
of a smell from the apartment, and when
of firemen and police break down the
door, they find the corpse Anne lying
on a bed, adorned with cut flowers, and
Georges dead on a couch. The story of their
love, struggle and despair is narrated in
flashback, and leaves not a dry eye among
the audience.
Baghban (2003):
Is there anything lonelier than having an
uncaring family? In Ravi Chopra’s weepie,
an elderly couple, Raj and Pooja Malhotra
(Amitabh Bachchan – Hema Malini)
are put in a strange quandary by their
nasty sons. Neither wants the ‘burden’ of
looking after the parents and they decide
to separate them, so that each son has to
care for one parent. After living together
for over 40 years, the seniors are lonely
and miserable. They are not treated with
the respect and compassion they expect
from their sons and their spouses. The film
did well because so many seniors saw their
own lives reflected in the tribulations of
the Malhotras.
About Schmidt (2002):
Jack Nicholson played William Schmidt
SENIORS TODAY | ISSUE #64 | OCTOBER 2024
in this Alexander Payne film, in which,
an insurance man retires from his job,
and does not know how to deal with the
emptiness of his days. When his wife
dies, the loneliness hits even harder. He
stops bathing, spends all his time in front
of the TV and eats frozen foods. After he
discovers that his wife had been unfaithful
to him, he spirals downwards even
more. He then decides to drive his newly
acquired RV to visit his daughter and try to
prevent her from marrying a man Schmidt
considers inferior. It was a role written for
an older Nicholson, who could play a batty
old man with full conviction.
Bariwali (2000):
The woman in Rituparno Ghosh’s Bengali
film is not old, but well past middle-age
and living a solitary life in a sprawling
estate. Her fiancé died of snake bite a day
before the wedding, and that blighted the
unfortunate Banalata’s (Kirron Kher) life.
She rarely moves out her home, and is
desperately lonely. For financial reasons,
Banalata is persuaded to allow a film
crew to shoot in a part of her mansion.
29