This entire essay is one big spoiler of the movie My Old Ass.
A guest essay by Steven Delpome on the Aubrey Plaza movie My Old Ass!
I put out a call for submissions and accepted Steven’s pitch of an essay about My Old Ass before I knew he was going to include within references to my favorite movie, John Patrick Shanley’s Joe Versus the Volcano. Take it away, Steven!
This entire essay is one big spoiler of the movie My Old Ass.
Near all of us, after a certain age, remember our youth incorrectly. Which is a weird sentence to begin an essay about death. But we Stand-By-Me our youth (“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve.”) without examining ourselves and it’s why we end up with so much entertainment that earns popularity by telling us, “You’re cool. You’re right. You’re one of us.”
We’re easy to manipulate because we manipulate ourselves all the time. We convince ourselves we are unattractive. That we are content with our lives. That there’s good food to eat at home. And it’s not even a matter of right or wrong as much as if these are even relevant things to worry about when in a blip we just die without ever being ready to and you will think it’s ridiculous or even sick to think like that and I say you are wrong and I’ll let playwright John Patrick Shanley counter:
“Almost all of us are in denial about death. And the weird thing is, you think, ‘They do that because if you were to worry about death, you couldn’t enjoy your life.’ But I think the reverse is true – if you don’t recognize your mortality you’re tiptoeing through life and not letting in the full reality of what it is.”
There's a Calvin and Hobbes comic that opens with a realistic sketch of a dead bird that the two characters it turns out are looking at as it lies on the ground. In it, the boy echoes Shanley’s feelings about people: “to go on with your daily affairs you can't really think about (death). ” Our entertainment validates that way of living: Death is for other people. Main characters grieve. But they do not acknowledge their own mortality. Dying sucks. And it sort of, kind of means in some sense you were not victorious. You lost. Grieving is cool! It's the right thing to do. Everyone does it. And everyone loves you when you do it. And the harder you grieve in a movie, the more awards they give you. And the better the audience feels about itself for having chosen to see that movie.
And that the movie doesn't do this is the only explanation for why none of you are going to the movies to see My Old Ass.
Of course, if you've made it this far after seeing the spoiler warning, I can assume you've watched the movie. And if you are reading what I've written, you are desperate enough for any discourse about it that you might keep reading. So let's take a walk. (and before we take a step let me acknowledge that yes older Elliot is grieving throughout the movie, but we are going to come back to that)
There's a genre of art where people encounter death, realize they haven't lived their life well, and come out on the other side realizing how they ought to live their life. And yes I am as familiar as you are with the Thoreau quote, but we are not publishing it here, because we are not going to hint even a little that Dead Poets Society is a quality example of this genre. Not in a world where The Apartment, It's a Wonderful Life, Undone (TV), Joe Versus The Volcano, “Story of Your Life (Short Story),” Our Town, and the Alistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol exist.
A quality story in this genre has to acknowledge that Western Society has a twisted relationship with both life and death. That we: Separate them from each other. Treat each primarily as a task. Avoid the discomfort in each. And overvalue measuring time.
Unlike the types of art mentioned at the start of this piece, this art is disappointed in you. But it is also fascinated enough with you to have hope for you. Just like Young Eliot feels about Older Elliot when they first meet in My Old Ass.
We who are already disappointed in ourselves because we have given ourselves over to the Western relationship with life and death, find a piece of art like this and feel hugged. After all, it finds me interesting. It has hope for me! Does my family? My friends? My boss? I hope so?
But as I age, I am less certain that those people are thinking of me. It’s the loss of that kind of faith in each other that most of us are unconsciously grieving every day. We used to be young Elliott and her friends wedding-party-level celebrating every accomplishment. We used to be interested in our friends’ hopes and dreams, even when we couldn’t articulate them (there’s a whole other essay to be written about movies that are excellent at showing what being young feels like and this movie would be the bedrock of that piece).
And it is appropriate to grieve the loss of those things but–
Let's take three steps back to that acting award-winning grief. This is the grief we emulate when we suffer major tragedies. Performances that burst with catharsis, and are cloaked in revelation and enlightenments to the point that, if you try, you can feel the writer's pen being guided by past therapy sessions. And doing those things are necessary to guide us through major tragedies.
Older Elliott’s grief is less immediate. Which is how the movie tricks us into thinking she is depressed because the future is a mess. There's no salmon. Someone out of nowhere is yelling at you to get into your basement. We follow the logic. We didn’t notice when younger Elliott is on the phone with her and telling her how Chad is someone she wants to both protect and punch in the face, that Older Elliott is breaking down on the other end of the line because of the memory of him.
She stops answering the phone and text messages. She smokes three pounds of pot. Seems like she had already quit school. She's coy and guarded. She's like most of us are after the heavy grieving is over but the pain stays. The reveal that Chad dies works because Older Elliot is so much like us in our day to day grief perhaps we can't even distinguish between our lives and long-term grief. She is not heavy-grieving, but after reflecting we can hear the movie asking us if she should be, and, because we older folk can connect with her general melancholy, should we be grieving harder for those youthful things we lost?
“Does anyone ever realize life while they live it? Every, every, minute?”
Emily asks this question toward the end of Our Town. The answer is no of course. We don't realize how good warm toast tastes and smells all the time. So we sure don't realize we have lost those youthful things that Young Elliott has. Hell we actively dispose of them and congratulate ourselves for maturing without any idea of what maturing actually is except that which we have observed and been told is maturity. We don't even Marie Kondo these things before getting rid of them. Thus we never consciously grieve their loss.
Those losses don't force us to catharize. And the mysteries of living aren't revealed to us in angel's song. Kind of like Chad talks about in the movie: one day we just stopped doing those things without realizing it. We got a little sadder for lacking the experience but not to a degree that we would ever notice immediately.
Our bodies want to grieve that loss right? And the parts of our brain that we can't access consciously? They have to want to grieve the losses. Otherwise why would we gradually get sadder, and more irritable, and angrier?
Two steps back. Look at the list of movies mentioned 10 or so paragraphs ago. In every one of them, after a character has faced death, something that should make them sad, irritable, or angry, doesn't. George Bailey kissing the newel post, Bob Cratchit being late to work, Alma Winograd enjoying time with her sister, CC Baxter smiling after getting punched in the face. Every one of them is echoing young Elliott: “I’m very grateful for this moment with you.“
“Dear God, whose name I do not know. Thank you for my life. I forgot how big… Thank you. Thank you for my life.” Joe Banks, after facing death twice in Joe Versus the Volcano, summons a prayer as beautiful as any religious leader has come up with.
These characters are people who have all been forced in one way or another to grieve those kind of losses. It's Joe realizing the Moon is beautiful. It's Alma realizing her boyfriend is actually pretty cool or that her mother has depths she never realized. Or it's as simple as George just desperately wanting Zuzu’s rose petals back. Older Elliott comes to realize that younger Elliott wasn't dumb for being who she was. She gets to see everything else she has lost besides Chad, and each Elliott grows in gratitude for what they have. Every character mentioned is grateful for getting back these things they never actually lost, but just lost track of.
In this niche genre of art, gratitude seems to be the end point, beginning point, and cornerstone of a good life. And one of the lessons we take from these stories. And it’s valuable. My Old Ass wants more for us.
In nearly every example of this niche genre that needs a name, the past, the things that happen before facing up with the grief of death, is something to be left behind because life is now starting anew. Not here. At the start of My Old Ass, Young Elliott and Older Elliott are joyfully butting heads about life. Each has only experienced one point of view. By the end, they’ve come together and learned from each other (it should be no surprise that it’s the younger person who was more willing to be flexible). That coming together signals the final message the movie gives us: Older Elliott’s last message isn’t one of a restart, which would dispose of the past, like so many other pieces of art send us. It’s a message of continuation, and it’s there that this movie about grief and death grows beyond the fantasy and romance of the others and, in spite of the fantastic elements, is the most grounded of them all.
If you are of a certain age, and you are in that unconscious grieving state our culture puts us into, you’ve tried restarting several times. Never fucking works. We find out that the idea of fresh starts and new years and new me’s are advertising. And we sink deeper into grief. My Old Ass tells us that there is no salvation but there is salve and it comes from continuing rather than starting. It wants us to ignore every motivational quote that tells us our grief and pain are building us toward something. It wants us to know that our grief and pain ARE something. There’s no goal. Because there’s no goal, there can be no starting point. Just continuing. All of it. “Every every second.” Our older regret is correct when we know we should be spending more time with the people we love, and our youth is right in having the gusto to actually go ahead and do that. Our older regret is right that we should be wearing our retainer and moisturizing and our younger self still did it right by skipping those things too often to take shrooms with their friends or have first dick sex with that boy they know they love.
So many great truths in life contradict. People are more impressed when you don’t try to impress them. The more you learn, the more you realize your ignorance. Even though you have more experience when you are older does not make you better at living your life. You find elation in other people, in spite of the reality that they are going to die and their death will devastate you.
It took Elliott seeing life from both ends to see that all of her life, every, every second, matters.
Steven Delpome is a teacher from New Jersey who feels pretty certain that he is happy despite thinking about death more often than maybe he should. He is on Twitter @NA_Dellsey.
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