Pamela Gravagne examines contemporary popular film’s treatment of age and aging in her thought-provoking and well-researched book, The Becoming of Age: Cinematic Visions of Mind, Body and Identity in Later Life (2013). Film and popular culture have, for some time, promoted an ageism reflecting the dominant Western model of old age as frailty and dependency. Just as films have influenced our perceptions of class, gender, and race, the images and messages of age produced by the dominant cinema (primarily Hollywood) have shaped our perceptions and attitudes towards older age and aging. Cinematic images and narratives make associations and convey meanings that have been largely one-dimensional, communicating a visual narrative of decline and, with that, an ageism that has become so pervasive in popular culture and film that ageism has been normalized and rendered largely invisible.

Gravagne sets out to prove in The Becoming of Age that, although contemporary popular film represents and reinforces ageism, it can also act as a medium of resistance with the potential to transform societal attitudes as well as our own lived experience of age and aging. Unfortunately, with the exception of Sally Chivers’s recent book, The Silvering Screen: Old Age and Disability in Cinema (2011), very little analysis has focused on age and ageism in film. The Becoming of Age provides a welcome contribution to this gap in knowledge.

To counteract the ubiquitous messages of ageism found in contemporary film, Gravagne calls for a deepening awareness and a critical approach to viewing popular film. She starts by asking seemingly simple yet complex questions starting with: “What is age?” and “What kinds of difference does age make?” (p. 10). To explore these questions, she examines the social and political forces that have influenced the discourses and shared meanings disseminated by popular culture, shaped by the theoretical and philosophical assumptions about age and aging ingrained in the foundation of our society. Her analytical framework is based on four primary theoretical perspectives: (a) essentialism, which is aging as an inevitable homogeneous “narrative of decline”; (b) social construction, which is age as socially and historically constructed; (c) a mixture of essentialism and social construction; and (d) a perspective that posits that our understanding of age and aging arise from our own “practices of knowing” (p. 5). By incorporating a wide range of social theories in her analysis including “feminism, postmodernism and critical and narrative gerontology”, Gravagne expands the theoretical framework for understanding old age and aging (p. 12).

The book is organized into six chapters focusing on: (a) theoretical understandings of age and aging; (b) gender (separated into two chapters on the representation of older men and women in film); (c) desire and intimacy in later life; (d) Alzheimer’s disease and its cinematic representation of personhood linked to memory and cognitive loss; and (e) “age as becoming” which considers age as a process of creative and continued engagement in life (p. 8–9). Using a varied selection of films ranging from the dominant Hollywood feature film model to independent documentaries and lesser-known European and Japanese films, Gravagne has chosen films for their potential to present “counterstories” to the stereotypical perspectives of older age typically found in cinema. Her specific film analysis extends to films from the individualistic Hollywood productions of Clint Eastwood; the sexist (and, many would argue, misogynist) romantic comedies of Jack Nicholson, such as Something’s Gotta Give (2003), or About Schmidt (2002); independent UK films, such as Calendar Girls (2003) and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012); and documentaries, including an American film on older women and sexuality, Still Doing It: The Intimate Lives of Women Over 65 (2003), as well as a film by the great Japanese animation filmmaker, Hayao Miyazaki: Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) ^{Footnote i} .

Noting the often contradictory messages conveyed in these films, Gravagne closely examines the discourses around age and aging. Her chapter on older men in film, for example, shows that while films such as Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino (2009) and the animated film Up (2009) reinforce societal ageist (and sexist) perceptions in their depiction of the older male characters as cranky and/or frail, they also present a counterstory that confronts these simplified ageist assumptions. But although films such as these may attempt to foreground ageist attitudes, they also promote “individualistic ideas of ‘successful aging’ based on continuing athletic prowess and unremarked class privilege that leave untouched the larger social contexts in which we age” (p. 63). In addition, both films conclude with stereotypical outcomes for the older adult male protagonists, either maintaining the narrative of decline or reinforcing the role of older adults as caregivers for their grandchildren. Contradictions are also woven into films with female central older characters. Although films such as Calendar Girls and Saving Grace (2000) present an alternative view of aging for women, these films too often collapse and fall back into gender and age stereotypes at the end, through either a fairy tale ending of finding “Mr. Right” or returning home to fulfill a role as the dutiful and supportive wife.

The representation of intimacy and desire in later life is not often featured in dominant cinema. In Chapter 4, Gravagne suggests that while often limited in their scope, the stories and images of romantic and sexual relationships between older people depicted in popular films such as Something’s Gotta Give and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel depict the lives of older adults in a way that challenges social conventions, forcing viewers to confront their own ageist assumptions about older age and intimacy. While this may in part be true, I found this chapter to be the least satisfying. In my opinion, although these films feature older adults in intimate relationships, the overt and covert sexism and ageism, as well as the presence of class and white male entitlement found in a number of these films, has been understated by Gravagne. In addition, Gravagne’s analysis of the subtext of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – the “outsourcing” of old age and retirement to foreign locales such as India – also deserves comment. Gravagne suggests that given the nature of our ageist Western society “it may be in the best interests of the old to outsource themselves” (p. 124). While this may be a possibility for some older adults, it also reinforces neo-liberal attitudes of individual responsibility and choice, ideas that are intrinsically linked to class and privilege.

Questions of personhood and person-centered care are explored in the chapter that looks at cognitive decline and memory loss. Gravagne asks us to view these films from a critical perspective with these questions in mind: Do they focus on the person with the disease or the family? Do they encourage an acknowledgement of the personhood of the individual with dementia or do they suggest that loss of memory equals loss of self?

The last chapter on “Age as Becoming” introduces exciting new ideas into the discourse on age, aging, and film. The concept of time (linear and abstract) and chronological age is central here, explored through an analysis of films such as Howl’s Moving Castle, “a film that literally animates the nonlinearity of mind and time, and the malleability of matter and space” (p. 9). This film and other films discussed in Chapter 6, such as Strangers in Good Company (1990) and The Straight Story (1999), are highly innovative films whose older characters are fully engaged in life as individuals with identities that are still in a process of change, not as older people in the last stage of life. Films such as these not only expose ageism as oppression but also as “interference with the differential becoming of the world itself” (p. 183).

Overall, this is an informative and original book that will be of interest to academics and non-academics alike with a concern about ageism in the context of popular film and media literacy.

In viewing any film about older age and aging, we would all do well to consider these questions posed by the author: