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To what extent should a documentary reveal its opinion of its subject? At the extreme end of the spectrum, where advocacy art such as 2015’s
Making a Murderer resides, investigative filmmakers may occasionally win hearts and minds but risk compromising veracity in their zeal to promote a cause. Other nonfiction projects, such as 2018’s
Free Solo and last year’s
Boys State, maintain a more neutral perspective, allowing viewers to form their own judgments. Balancing awkwardly between these two poles is
Some Kind of Heaven, a new feature from debut documentarian Lance Oppenheim. An examination of the Villages, Florida, a retirement community described by one occupant as “God’s waiting room,” the film plainly holds its subject in disdain. What is less clear is precisely why that happens to be the case.
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explores what it means to feel younger as you get older, documenting the lives of people at The Villages, America’s largest retirement community, located northwest of Orlando.
“One of the things that fascinated me so much about the place and made me want to go make a film about it, really was the way in which this community presents itself with a history that stretches back far into the times of Juan Ponce de Leon, finding the fountain of youth, supposedly. But really, the community s only been really around since the 80s and it started off as a trailer park,” said the film’s director, Lance Oppenheim.
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