(Leica X1)These days the chance of seeing a movie with an all-star oldie cast is few and far between. But if you are interested, there is one on recently. It's The Most Exotic Marigold Hotel. I watched a preview of this thought-provoking work of John Madden, the director who swept seven Academy awards with the Shakespeare in Love back in 1998. Marigold Hotel is themed on the notion of aging, life goals and the regrets of life.
In the movie, the director tried to portrait two types of people. One is those who are unduly absorbed in the past. They live in memories, in regrets for the good old days, or in sadness about the things they have or have not done in life. It was heart-warming to see in the movie some gradually managed to liberate themselves from the missing pieces of life which had oppressed their soul for too long. But grabbing a stronger hold of the heart were the sad moments when the characters clung back to their comfort zone in the hope of sucking vigour from what vitality they wrongly thought might have left in it.
The other type is those who don't care much about the statistical fact of the years they had lived, still less of the brevity of their future. They went on pursuing their personal passion, searching for love and sex. This is where I could not quite buy the plot. Searching for love and sex for the sake of having them is just as good as it gets. There should be something behind but the director has failed to dig deeper. I mean, what makes it easier to live a fruitful old age are impersonal interests instead. As one grows old, the ego should recede and become merged in the universal life. At the other end of life, what matters most is not what pleases one’s own heart but what one can no longer do but will be carried on.
Apart from this wistful sense of wanting something deeper, I think `the Marigold Hotel is fairly recommendable.
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