Some Kind of Heaven

There is an enormous retirement development in Florida. Streets lined with palms, golf carts, clubs and live music every evening. More than a hundred thousand people live there and all of them are over sixty five. The documentary follows four. A couple have been married forty years and the husband has a drug problem. A woman has lost her husband and is trying to build a new life. A man has got in without permission; he lives in his van, has no membership, and hopes to find a well off woman. The camera follows these four and looks under the life in the brochure. Lance Oppenheim directs. Darren Aronofsky is among the producers. It is an American production. The place is real; this development in Florida is cited as one of the largest retirement communities in the world. Its visual language is close to fiction; symmetrical framing and colour composition are used, and the choice was argued over. The matter it treats is whether happiness can be bought; the development itself is built as a promise. Those who speak do not hide their situations and some scenes are quite intimate. The narrative neither celebrates the place nor simply mocks it. The film was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. Its limit is scope; focusing on four people, the documentary does not enter the economic structure of the development. Who it is for: viewers who like observational documentary and work about American society. Who it is not for: it is slow, the subject narrow, and some scenes sad.