Romancefest 6: On Golden Pond

ON GOLDEN POND has a quality that's a little more rare than you'd imagine in most movies:

It's nice.

I don't mean to be patronizing using a word like "nice." I felt the same way about WHIP IT, which bears almost no resemblance to ON GOLDEN POND, but which I liked so much last year just because of how nice it was. Nice, honest, true, open. That's ON GOLDEN POND.

The movie stars Katherine Hepburn and Henry Fonda, both in the twilight of their careers, as an elderly couple spending yet another summer at their cabin on Golden Pond. Hepburn's cheery and optimistic while Fonda is cranky and seems obsessed with death, which to him seems to be right around the corner. The movie opens on the eve of his 80th birthday, with Hepburn on the verge of 70.

Their somewhat estranged daughter, played by Fonda's real life daughter, Jane Fonda, shows up with her fiancee (Dabney Coleman) and his son (Doug McKeon). I say somewhat estranged because it seems to be mostly an emotional estrangement -- no one has been disowned, there haven't been any major fights. Jane Fonda's character simply feels a distance between her and her father, and her mother to a lesser extent, and doesn't like the way she regresses into an insecure childhood when she's around them. She's grown up and in control in her new life in Los Angeles, why can't she seem to be at ease with her parents in her childhood home? So, she doesn't visit as much as they might like, but the parents, to be fair, also don't make it easy -- Mom is quick to dismiss the past in hopes of moving forward and Dad uses insults and mean-spirited jokes to avoid discussing anything real or meaningful.

The best passages of the film begin when Jane Fonda's character announces she's going off on a month long vacation with her fiancee and asks if her parents wouldn't mind taking care of 13 year old Billy for a while. The elderly couple agrees, and Billy and Henry Fonda's character take their first tentative steps towards a meaningful relationship, mostly based around their endless quest fishing the lake for a legendary trout named Walter. Billy's attempts at shocking the old man with his adolescent use of four letter words actually turns out to be a natural match with Fonda's characters' crotchety and antagonistic personality, and there's a touching scene in which the kid tells Fonda he won't be around much longer, meaning the summer is almost over, and Fonda says he won't be around much longer, either, meaning his life is almost over.

The kid says, "I'll miss you," under his breath and Fonda pretends not to hear. Then, they get back to the business of catching fish.

There's some beautiful cinematography from Billy Williams and some nice, although sometimes intrusive, music from Dave Grusin. But the real strength is in the script by Ernest Thompson, adapting from his own play, which manages to be a crowd pleaser while also not coming off as fake. Part of this is also thanks to the great acting, but you get the refreshing sense that these people really do love each other and really do want things to work out. They're not just slaves to an arbitrary plot.

This is the first movie I've seen this month to feature an old, seasoned couple who has been through a lot. Most of the other ones have been about youth, so far. But, this one is still kind of a coming of age story, as young Billy is thrown in to teach the old man a little bit about himself. My favorite dialogue exchange, which I'll paraphrase, is between Katherine Hepburn and Billy after Fonda throws a fit and misdirects his anger at the kid.

"He's just trying to find his way," Hepburn says. "Just like you."

It's a valuable lesson. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own minds that we forget stuff is going on in other peoples' minds, too. Whether they're younger than us or older than us, everyone is constantly going through changes and adapting to life, no one has it figured out.

Chances are, if you're trying to figure out what your relationship is supposed to be with someone who matters in your life, they're probably trying to figure out that same thing about you.

Sometimes people act tough when they're afraid to be weak, and sometimes people act grumpy when they're just shy.

So, be patient.