Growing old isn’t easy.
Aside from the obvious physical changes – going bald, grey hair, wrinkles, back pain, body aches, and so forth – there’s the question of what you do with yourself once you’ve reached retirement age and no longer have the energy to do everything you want.
Bringing of all this up when you’re in your mid 40s could be seen as an overreaction on this reviewer’s part, but it’s something you can’t help thinking about at this stage.
It doesn’t all have to be doom and gloom, though; there’s still plenty for people to do in their golden years. Silver Screamers is an amusing, affectionate documentary that shows how senior citizens can still remain productive, upbeat and have lots to share with others.
Director Sean Cisterna wanted to make a short film and hit upon a great idea to secure some funding: hire senior citizens as his film crew. It was his way to give something back to the community, to give his elders one last adventure in their golden years and have them share their life experience. So he hits up retirement homes in the Ontario area and comes up with a motley crew of misfits, any of whom would have been a scene-stealing supporting character in any other movie.
There’s Lucia, an Italian painter who’s the obvious choice for Production Design; Anthony, a flamboyant, twitchy eccentric who collects random things (bottle caps, stamps and whatnot), and shows signs of being a compulsive hoarder, who probably only needed to raid his closet to become the film’s Prop Master; and most surprising of all, 96 year-old Audrey, whose mind is still as sharp as a tack and happily takes up the mantle of Sound Recordist rather than hit up yet another retirement home hacky sack tournament.
Cisterna’s little magnum opus is a short horror film called The Rug, about the titular human-eating piece of décor; the senior citizens happily jump at the chance not because they’re horror fans – their facial expressions to a screening of The Exorcist range from “What the hell am I watching?” to “Playing the movie Diner in my head” – but because they see it as a chance to stay active and do something meaningful. For widowed makeup artist Diane and first A.D. Bari-Lynne, whose husband undergoes debilitating cancer treatments, the film is an opportunity to keep themselves occupied rather than be overwhelmed by their tragic circumstances.
Silver Screamers has been referred to as “American Movie meets Cocoon”, and while that certainly fits, this is more of an anti-American Movie; for one thing, there’s not a drop of cynicism here. The short film is shot over a weekend with a small crew and what seems like three actors, and the calm, soft-spoken Cisterna seems to be running it all pretty smoothly. This seems to be hitting back against the idea that all film shoots are loud, stressful environments riddled with inflated egos; you won’t find anyone yelling at the DOP here.
Cisterna even takes the time to assign mentors to his crew of seniors, even though most of them take to the work very quickly; camera operator Sonny has no problem adjusting to newfangled modern cameras, to his mentor’s surprise. Others can’t help getting up to some mischief; Anthony and costume designer Diane, whose work is practically over by the time Cisterna calls Action, hilariously form a Buddy Movie duo who sit on the sidelines, happily whining about how interminably long the shoot is.
The quality of the final product notwithstanding – The Rug is available for free on YouTube and on Kanopy for everyone to make up their own minds – this documentary is an affecting behind-the-scenes look at a shoot that might not mean much to regular film fans, but meant the world to its unconventional crew. Here are a group of senior citizens pushing back against the idea that the elderly have nothing to offer, that their time is up, by rolling up their sleeves and getting to work.
It’s an amusing wake-up call that seniors don’t deserve to be left on the sidelines and forgotten, and that they still have plenty to share and a lot to live for.
Silver Screamers is now streaming on BloodStream.