Some Kind of Heaven

Some Kind of Heaven is a 2020 American documentary film about The Villages, Florida, the world's largest retirement community. Marking the directorial feature debut of Lance Oppenheim, the film is a stylized portrait of four residents living within The Villages, Florida struggling to find happiness and meaning in life's final chapters. The film, produced by Darren Aronofsky, The New York Times, and Los Angeles Media Fund premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was the sole documentary to play in the NEXT section, a category known for "pure, bold works distinguished by innovative, forward-thinking approach[es] to storytelling". [1]

Some Kind of Heaven
Promotional release poster
Directed by	Lance Oppenheim
Produced by	Darren Aronofsky Kathleen Lingo Melissa Oppenheim Lano Pacho Velez Lance Oppenheim Jeffrey Soros Simon Horsman
Music by	Ari Balouzian
Cinematography	David Bolen
Edited by	Daniel Garber Lance Oppenheim
Release date	January 26, 2020 (2020-01-26) (Sundance)
Running time	83 minutes
Country	United States

Synopsis

At The Villages, often called the "Disneyland for Retirees", we meet four residents living on the margins, striving to find happiness. From synchronized swimming to pickleball, the good life is waiting, as well as a discounted funeral package now at a new, lower price. While most residents have bought into the community's packaged positivity, married couple Anne and Reggie wrestle with Reggie’s deteriorating grip on reality and psychedelic drug use; Barbara, a widow, seeks second love; and Dennis, an 82-year-old bachelor living out of a van, searches for a wealthy woman to take care of him for his remaining years. Though the film "illustrates the gap between The Villages' advertising copy and the practical reality of living there", Some Kind of Heaven invests more in the "dreams and desires of its residents".[2]

Development and production

Oppenheim and his crew filming at The Villages, Florida

The film initially emerged from 24-year-old director Lance Oppenheim’s undergraduate thesis in the Visual and Environmental Studies program at Harvard University, where he collaborated with classmate and co-producer Christian Vazquez. At Harvard, Oppenheim worked on an earlier version of the film under the tutelage of filmmakers Robb Moss, Ross McElwee, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, and Alfred Guzzetti, which informed the creation of the rest of the project.[3] The film continued to develop through the Sundance Ignite program, of which Oppenheim was a fellow.[4]

A Floridian, Oppenheim was interested in returning home to explore why "thousands of retirees were moving across the country, isolating themselves in a Truman Show-like bubble-world that reminded them of their youth".[5] Prior to filming, Oppenheim ventured to The Villages and lived in a rented room for nearly thirty days with retired rodeo clowns to embed himself into the social fabric of the place.[5] Production took place over four shoots (scattered across eighteen months), with a crew five – Oppenheim, Vazquez, cinematographer David Bolen, Melissa Oppenheim Lano (Oppenheim's sister and lead physical producer), and sound recordist Richard Carlos.[6] Bolen, the cinematographer of the film, worked with Oppenheim to develop the heightened style and look of the film before production. Bolen and Oppenheim have been collaborating since the latter was 17-years-old.[6] Using inspiration from Larry Sultan's Pictures from Home series, Ulrich Seidl, Todd Haynes' Safe, and Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands, Oppenheim and Bolen wanted the film's images to mirror the controlled, manicured and hyperreal landscapes of The Villages.[6][7][8]

After collaborating with Kathleen Lingo at The New York Times on his three previous short documentaries for Op-Docs, Oppenheim approached Lingo regarding the film, initially envisioning it as a short documentary. Lingo urged Oppenheim to develop the project into a feature, thus sparking their fourth collaboration – and The New York Times'  first feature film production – together.[9] Darren Aronofsky met Oppenheim when he was still a senior in college after Oppenheim "found [his] email on the internet" and spent nearly five years sending unsolicited cold-emails.[10] Upon finally getting in touch with Aronofsky and his team at Protozoa Pictures, Oppenheim shared a sizzle reel to the film. Aronofsky, impressed with the surreal setting and film's visual approach, signed on shortly thereafter.[7][11]

Editor Daniel Garber joined the project starting when only a quarter of the footage had been shot. Garber worked with Oppenheim to give the stories of the film their shape, even visiting The Villages himself to get a better sense of the place.[12] In interviews, Oppenheim has credited Garber as the film's "co-author", and being integral in the creating a grammar that "was more experiential than other documentaries... something that felt like a narrative film but retained the integrity of being 100% grounded in reality".[7] Oppenheim and composer Ari Balouzian conceived of the score as an "integral part of the story they wanted to tell", embracing a "dreamy, orchestral sounds with harp inflections that invoke Old Hollywood to capture the tension between the sunny, polished exterior of The Villages and its harsher day-to-day realities". [13]

Critical response

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on 8 reviews, with a weighted average of 7.5/10, as of 26 March 2020.[14]

The film was described by Dennis Harvey of Variety as "highly entertaining…those nostalgic for the fond portraits of eccentric Americana in Errol Morris’ early work — and pretty much everyone else — will be delighted by the film".[15] Beandrea July of The Hollywood Reporter echoed similar sentiments, remarking that the film is a "solid feature debut from a bright young filmmaker who, despite his age, is able to expand our understanding of the complicated lives of older Americans".[13]

Production still

Vadim Rizov of Filmmaker Magazine praised the film for possessing a "visual discipline rare in US nonfiction", as did Vikram Murthi of review site RogerEbert.com who wrote: "Oppenheim's keen compositional sense perfectly bolsters the film’s narrative: each carefully crafted frame provides whomever is in it with inherent worth".[16][2] Eric Hynes of Film Comment took particular interest in the "age gap between Oppenheim and his subjects", impressed by the level of trust and respect that Oppenheim was able to foster: "I’m intrigued by a young filmmaker identifying with persons at the other end of the life cycle, and the older subjects in turn respecting and trusting someone like Oppenheim with the less-than-cute fogey matters of loneliness, financial insecurity, marital discord, and unceasingly disorienting change. I hazard to think that the film’s mutual curiosity gives Some Kind of Heaven its vivifying spirit, that transforms what might have been familiarly charming and smirkily knowing into something more troubling, elusive, and enduring".[17]

References

1. "2020 Sundance Film Festival: 118 Feature Films Announced". www.sundance.org. December 4, 2019. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
2. Murthi, Vikram (March 20, 2020). "True/False 2020 Dispatch 3: IWOW: I Walk on Water, Mayor, Some Kind of Heaven". www.rogerebert.com. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
3. Radsken, Jill (January 21, 2020). "Student and alumnus have films premiering at Sundance". The Harvard Gazette. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
4. Yapp, Virginia (January 29, 2020). "In 'Some Kind of Heaven,' a Young Filmmaker Cracks the Manicured Facade of the World's Largest Retirement Community". www.sundance.org. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
5. Valdivia, Sebastián Martinez (March 5, 2020). "Weirdness with Lance Oppenheim (Some Kind of Heaven)". www.kbia.org. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
6. Sheldon, Rin Ehlers (January 29, 2020). "Sundance 2020: Spotlight on David Bolen, DP of "Some Kind of Heaven"". Cinema 5D. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
7. "Lance Oppenheim". Rough Cut. January 27, 2020. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
8. Kring-Schreifels, Jake (February 1, 2020). "Sundance Review: Some Kind of Heaven Examines Whether Retirement Can Be Paradise". The Film Stage. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
9. Setoodeh, Ramin (January 21, 2020). "Why the New York Times Is Getting Into the Documentary Films Business (Exclusive)". Variety. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
10. Buder, Emily (January 24, 2020). "The Sundance Diaries: This First-Time Filmmaker Cold-Emailed Darren Aronofsky to Produce His Premiere". No Film School. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
11. Carey, Matthew (January 28, 2020). "Darren Aronofsky Returns To Sundance With 'Some Kind Of Heaven', Directed By Gifted Young Protégé With "Tremendous Potential"". Deadline. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
12. "Sundance: Some Kind Of Heaven editor Daniel Garber". Post Magazine. February 12, 2020.
13. July, Beandrea (January 30, 2020). "'Some Kind of Heaven': Film Review | Sundance 2020". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
14. "Some Kind of Heaven (2020)". Retrieved March 26, 2020 – via www.rottentomatoes.com.
15. Harvey, Dennis (January 31, 2020). "'Some Kind of Heaven': Film Review". Retrieved July 28, 2020.
16. Rizov, Vadim (January 26, 2020). "Sundance 2020 Dispatch 3: Some Kind of Heaven, Black Bear, The Fight". Filmmaker Magazine. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
17. Hynes, Eric (2020). "We the Living". Film Comment. Retrieved July 28, 2020.

External links

• Some Kind of Heaven on IMDb