If you could spend your golden years painted in the purple twilight, enjoying all the hobbies of your youth, and living happily in a bubble of your own design, would you? Those who would often find themselves in The Villages, Florida, and “Some Kind of Heaven” follows four residents whose lives don’t meet their idyllic aspirations.
The 2020 film, directed by Lance Oppenheim, beautifully demonstrates the stylistic marriage between himself and longtime collaborator/cinematographer David Bolen with their expert use of creeping shadows, slow zooms, and vivid colors. These all allow the audience to feel connected both to the characters’ personal lives as well as the overarching culture they’re immersed in. It’s not an easy task to showcase the utopian yet alien environment of The Villages but this movie’s use of light and color helps show the surreal quality of the residents’ lives.
Unfortunately, it is in the film’s representation of The Village’s culture that it falls short.
“Some Kind of Heaven” presents The Villages, America’s largest retirement town, as a manicured construction of fantasy, which is all true, however in their desperate attempts to find faults in the facade, they too clearly showcase themselves as outsiders.
This can be seen in the first fifteen minutes of the film where we’re introduced to Richard Schwartz, son of The Villages’ founder Harold Schwartz. Richard is presented to the audience as the film’s inside source into the design and philosophy of The Villages. His place of power feels paramount to establishing trust between the filmmakers and the town itself.
This trust falls apart when you know that Richard has little to no influence over The Villages. His late brother Gary Morse took over from their father and his legacy is carried on by his own children. The Morse family was likely smart enough not to plaster their faces in this film, so the audience is left with a shallow authority and evidence that Oppenheim and his crew don’t know nearly as much about The Villages as they’d like us to believe.
There are serious conversations to be had about The Villages from the environmental pressure the extensive golf courses create to the rampant STI transmission rate. There is certainly an underbelly to this Disneyworld for retirees, unfortunately, this movie would rather generalize and sensationalize the personal plights of its cast and present them as systematic issues.
I can certainly feel compassion for Barbara’s grief and Anne’s marriage struggles but when they’re presented alongside someone like Dennis, who doesn’t even actually live in The Villages but rather preys upon the women who do, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to see these issues as systemic failings of the city itself.
Ultimately this movie is a pretty face, masterfully crafted but lacking in compassion for the town it centers and the people who live their daily lives there. Oppenheim claims he wasn’t interested in journalism with this movie but rather “what happens when fantasy turns into a nightmare.”
Don’t expect to watch this movie and know anything about what it’s like to really live in The Villages. But if you’re interested in interpersonal strife, factoids, and style then this is certainly an enjoyable 83 minutes.
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