Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1208901
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 9 FEBRUARY 2020 18 ELDERLY CARE PARK CITY — Viggo Mortensen said he's turned down a lot of work — good work, maybe even career-defining work — in recent years. Sometimes, friends even asked him if he was still act- ing. Yes, Mortensen remained a working actor, but he was also a caretaker. His parents suffered from dementia, and needed him close by. "There are a lot of issues that you learn to deal with," Mortensen said while speaking with the De- seret News in Park City. "How do you respect someone's dignity, privacy and independence and still protect them from them- selves, and society from them?" Mortensen's new film, "Fall- ing" — which he wrote, directed, produced and scored — also stars Mortensen as a son struggling to care for his aging father. The pre- vious night, "Falling" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was chosen as the fes- tival's closing night film. That choice seemed fitting: Movies about the elderly, and the chal- lenges their children face once they become a parent's primary caregiver, populated every corner of the Sundance slate this year. Features ("Falling," "The Father"), documentaries ("Dick Johnson is Dead," "The Mole Agent") and even horror films ("Amulet") tackled the subject throughout Sundance's 11 days. "Minari," a Korean drama that became the biggest hit at this year's festival, is partly about how an ailing grand- mother impacts her progeny. "Ninety-nine percent of people don't have all that money (for) 24/7 caregivers," Mortensen said. "So I think it makes sense that people are making movies related to that." Florian Zeller, a renowned French playwright who brought an adaptation of his play "The Fa- ther" to Sundance this year, told the Deseret News, "Everyone has to deal with this matter. There are many, many movies talking about that now, and I'm not sur- prised, because this is the saddest issue of our time." The statistics back Zeller up. According to a 2015 study by the National Alliance for Caregiving and the AARP, more than 34 mil- lion US citizens have provided unpaid care to an adult age 50 or older in the last 12 months. Near- ly 16 million of these adult fami- ly caregivers look after someone with Alzheimer's disease or de- mentia. During the 2000s, the number of adults taking care of aging parents tripled — and the Population Reference Bureau re- ported that by 2060, the number of seniors over 65 living in the US is expected to double. As life expectancies increase, adults are looking after their el- derly parents for longer time periods. According to Parenting our Parents, an online communi- ty for adults in this situation, 15% of current caregivers say they've spent at least 10 years looking af- ter their parents. Primary family caregivers of those with demen- tia average nine hours of car- egiving time per day. A report by the AARP Public Policy Institute revealed that the average adult child who is a caregiver loses more than $300,000 in lifetime wages and retirement benefits as a result of their caregiving. This wage loss can deplete one's own retirement savings. These harsh realities manifest in cinema — perhaps particularly at a festival like Sundance, which has long been known for show- casing films exploring family dy- namics. In "Falling," Mortensen's char- acter deals with considerable cruelty. The character's father, Willis, is a perpetually crass, vi- olent and suspicious man who tormented his family long be- fore he ever had dementia. Of all the feeble parents in this year's Sundance films, Willis might be the least sympathetic.±But Mortensen's character is pa- tient, often astoundingly so — he seems to embody the lessons that the real-life Mortensen gained though years of family caregiving. He's been through this before, his parents are gone now, he under- stands their struggle for what it really was. "And it's sad when you see your parents get dementia, because you're losing a part of them, but you have to adjust. What is it that they need? What's going to make them comfortable? It's not about you, it's about them," he ex- plained. "That's an ego problem you have to deal with. … If you want to be useful, get over it. Cry, by all means, be upset. But get on with it." Zeller's "The Father" stars An- thony Hopkins as a parent in a more advanced stage of demen- tia. Almost the entire film is told from Hopkins' character's per- spective — an approach, Zeller said, that lets audiences "expe- rience a slice of dementia." The character's world is in constant upheaval as his memory fails him. Hopkins plays the part with ka- leidoscopic emotion. Sometimes he's angry, sometimes he's afraid, sometimes he's embarrassed by his loosening grip on reality. "The shame is a door, and when you open the door, you have something else, like anger, like fears, like mistrust," Zeller de- scribed. According to Parenting our Parents, 90% of senior parents wish to remain in their own home instead of joining an assisted liv- ing facility. This year's Sundance films showed the full spectrum of options for these aging par- ents — and the complicated is- sues these options can present. In the Chilean documentary "The Mole Agent," a private investiga- tor hires Sergio, an 83-year-old widower, to live in an assisted living facility for three months, to find out whether the staff is mistreating one of its elderly res- idents. "The Mole Agent" reveals the debilitating loneliness and abandonment these seniors face. Some haven't had a family mem- ber visit them for years. On the other end of the spec- trum are residents of The Vil- lages, an enormous senior com- munity in central Florida. The Villages has 130,000 residents, a handful of which get profiled in the Sundance doc "Some Kind of Heaven." It premiered during Sundance's opening weekend, and shows the other side of sen- ior living. The Villages exist as a kind of retiree's utopia: endless golf courses, swimming pools, restaurants, events and fellow seniors. At the film's premiere, director Lance Oppenheim said that for many residents, The Vil- lages are an escape from typical family responsibilities. But all is not perfect in paradise. Oppenheim's film focuses on res- idents who, he said, exist "on the fringes of the fantasy." One cou- ple considers divorcing after the husband faces incarceration for drug possession. Another wom- an grieves the recent death of her husband. One aging grifter lives in his van, scouring The Villages for a wealthy female companion. The Villages is a lively place, but it doesn't provide space for grief, or strife, or any of adulthood's other existential concerns. For Zeller, films like "Falling" and "The Father" and "Dick John- son is Dead" can improve how we care for the elderly — and how we care for ourselves. "The point of having movies about this issue is not just about making people cry," Zeller said. "It's about making people feel that they are part of something bigger than themselves, which is humanity, and the fact that you can share those emotions. And as soon as you feel that you are not alone with this pain, something new appears. The pain remains the pain, but it is meaningful to feel that you are brothers and sis- ters in pain and disease. I think art is here for that reason." At Sundance 2020, an unlikely spotlight: elderly care Dick Johnson in a scene from the film "Dick Johnson is Dead," which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival