Some Kind of Heaven

Some Kind of Heaven
Promotional release poster
Directed by	Lance Oppenheim
Produced by	Darren Aronofsky Kathleen Lingo Melissa Oppenheim Lano Pacho Velez Lance Oppenheim Jeffrey Soros Simon Horsman
Cinematography	David Bolen
Edited by	Daniel Garber Lance Oppenheim
Music by	Ari Balouzian
Production companies	Protozoa Pictures The New York Times Los Angeles Media Fund 30West
Distributed by	Magnolia Pictures
Release date	January 26, 2020 (2020-01-26) (Sundance)
Running time	83 minutes
Country	United States
Box office	$37,334

Some Kind of Heaven is a 2020 American documentary film about The Villages, Florida, the world's largest retirement community. Marking the directorial feature debut of Lance Oppenheim, the film is a stylized portrait of four residents living within The Villages, Florida struggling to find happiness and meaning in life's final chapters. The film, produced by Darren Aronofsky, The New York Times, and Los Angeles Media Fund premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was the sole documentary to play in the NEXT section, a category known for "pure, bold works distinguished by innovative, forward-thinking approach[es] to storytelling". The film was acquired by Magnolia Pictures and will be released on January 15, 2021.

Synopsis

At The Villages, often called the "Disneyland for Retirees", we meet four residents living on the margins, striving to find happiness. From synchronized swimming to pickleball, the good life is waiting, as well as a discounted funeral package now at a new, lower price. While most residents have bought into the community's packaged positivity, married couple Anne and Reggie wrestle with Reggie’s deteriorating grip on reality and psychedelic drug use; Barbara, a widow, seeks second love; and Dennis, an 82-year-old bachelor living out of a van, searches for a wealthy woman to take care of him for his remaining years. Though the film "illustrates the gap between The Villages' advertising copy and the practical reality of living there", Some Kind of Heaven invests more in the "dreams and desires of its residents".

Development and production

Oppenheim and his crew filming at The Villages, Florida

The film initially emerged from director Lance Oppenheim’s undergraduate thesis in the Visual and Environmental Studies program at Harvard University, where he collaborated with classmate and co-producer Christian Vazquez. At Harvard, Oppenheim worked on an earlier version of the film under the tutelage of filmmakers Robb Moss, Ross McElwee, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, and Alfred Guzzetti, which informed the creation of the rest of the project. The film continued to develop through the Sundance Ignite program, of which Oppenheim was a fellow.

A Floridian, Oppenheim was interested in returning home to explore why "thousands of retirees were moving across the country, isolating themselves in a Truman Show-like bubble-world that reminded them of their youth". Prior to filming, Oppenheim ventured to The Villages and lived in a rented room for nearly thirty days with retired rodeo clowns to embed himself into the social fabric of the place. Production took place over four shoots (scattered across eighteen months), with a crew five – Oppenheim, Vazquez, cinematographer David Bolen, Melissa Oppenheim Lano (Oppenheim's sister and lead physical producer), and sound recordist Richard Carlos. Bolen, the cinematographer of the film, worked with Oppenheim to develop the heightened style and look of the film before production. Bolen and Oppenheim have been collaborating since the latter was 17-years-old. Using inspiration from Larry Sultan's Pictures from Home series, Ulrich Seidl, Todd Haynes' Safe, and Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands, Oppenheim and Bolen wanted the film's images to mirror the controlled, manicured and hyperreal landscapes of The Villages.

After collaborating with Kathleen Lingo at The New York Times on his three previous short documentaries for Op-Docs, Oppenheim approached Lingo regarding the film, initially envisioning it as a short documentary. Lingo urged Oppenheim to develop the project into a feature, thus sparking their fourth collaboration – and one of The New York Times'  first feature film production – together. Darren Aronofsky met Oppenheim when he was still a senior in college after Oppenheim "found [his] email on the internet" and spent nearly five years sending unsolicited cold-emails. Upon finally getting in touch with Aronofsky and his team at Protozoa Pictures, Oppenheim shared a sizzle reel to the film. Aronofsky, impressed with the surreal setting and film's visual approach, signed on shortly thereafter.

Editor Daniel Garber joined the project starting when only a quarter of the footage had been shot. Garber worked with Oppenheim to give the stories of the film their shape, even visiting The Villages himself to get a better sense of the place. In interviews, Oppenheim has credited Garber as the film's "co-author", and being integral in the creating a grammar that "was more experiential than other documentaries... something that felt like a narrative film but retained the integrity of being 100% grounded in reality". Oppenheim and composer Ari Balouzian conceived of the score as an "integral part of the story they wanted to tell", embracing a "dreamy, orchestral sounds with harp inflections that invoke Old Hollywood to capture the tension between the sunny, polished exterior of The Villages and its harsher day-to-day realities".

Critical response

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 91% based on 53 reviews, with a weighted average of 7.80/10 as of 23 January 2021. The website's critics consensus reads: "Some Kind of Heaven could have gone deeper into its subject, but it remains a breezily entertaining look at some interesting people."

The film was described by Dennis Harvey of Variety as "highly entertaining…those nostalgic for the fond portraits of eccentric Americana in Errol Morris’ early work — and pretty much everyone else — will be delighted by the film". Beandrea July of The Hollywood Reporter echoed similar sentiments, remarking that the film is a "solid feature debut from a bright young filmmaker who, despite his age, is able to expand our understanding of the complicated lives of older Americans".

Production still

Vadim Rizov of Filmmaker Magazine praised the film for possessing a "visual discipline rare in US nonfiction", as did Vikram Murthi of review site RogerEbert.com who wrote: "Oppenheim's keen compositional sense perfectly bolsters the film’s narrative: each carefully crafted frame provides whomever is in it with inherent worth". Ezra Haber Glenn of The Arts Fuse praised the film's critical view of New Urbanist architectural design as well as the "emptiness" of the lifestyles portrayed, noting, "[t]he first hints to the pervasive emptiness of The Villages are the visual clues dropped by Oppenheim’s clever cinematography, conveying the artificial nature of the development’s design... Like a day in a Disney dream-land, the 'heaven-on-earth' glow of life in The Villages ultimately fades – quicker for some than others – and rather than rich fulfilling nourishment we are left with nothing but the sickly false-taste of artificial sweeteners."

Eric Hynes of Film Comment took particular interest in the "age gap between Oppenheim and his subjects", impressed by the level of trust and respect that Oppenheim was able to foster: "I’m intrigued by a young filmmaker identifying with persons at the other end of the life cycle, and the older subjects in turn respecting and trusting someone like Oppenheim with the less-than-cute fogey matters of loneliness, financial insecurity, marital discord, and unceasingly disorienting change. I hazard to think that the film’s mutual curiosity gives Some Kind of Heaven its vivifying spirit, that transforms what might have been familiarly charming and smirkily knowing into something more troubling, elusive, and enduring".

External links

• Some Kind of Heaven at IMDb