“Some Kind Of Heaven” & The Promise of Utopia

“It’s really nice… to get up every morning and be able to say, ‘It’s gonna be the same way from house to house. The same today as it is tomorrow, as it is next year, as it is in five years, or ten years, or twenty years.’”

    In Florida’s retirement paradise of The Villages, elderly people from across the country settle to experience the promise of utopia. However, the fantasyland doesn’t deliver everything it vows to. The Villages are a parody of the perfect life, and sell the guarantee of perfection, letting retired Americans live out their final years in “God’s waiting room for heaven”. But the utopian experiences don’t make life whole. They are empty and insincere, and the disreality of it all burrows itself in the minds of its residents, the subjects of this documentary. 

One of the highlights of the movie is the vibrant cinematography, shot by David Bolen. Using a 4:3 aspect ratio, the shot compositions capture the inauthentically aged feel of The Villages; its bogus history told through marketing videos, its eminent sense of nostalgia to draw in older residents, its cracks painted on the wall to add importance and resilience to its artificial landscape. Through the aspect ratio, the compositions, and the vivid colors, we are subtly reminded of how uncomfortable the environment feels. There is no warmth to this vibrance. We feel as though we should be able to look beyond the edges of the shots, and past those edges we will find a real life, one that isn’t constructed and disingenuous, but we, and the subjects of the documentary, remain within this claustrophobic box. 

Told through brilliant, sharp editing, we get to circle the lives of a selection of residents and understand how they come to terms with the derealization of life in a pseudo-utopian reality. Some use drugs to cope, some busy themselves with a surplus of activities to keep the horror from setting in. Some sit and watch the time pass, turning the pages in their calendar, sleeping every night in a house that looks just like the one next to it. Some face it head on, and realize that a life of promised comfort is not a life of freedom. It’s not a life of prosperity, or a life of happiness. For them, a life in this kind of heaven is not a life. 

    “God answers all our prayers, but rarely is it the answer we are looking for.”

OVERALL SCORE: 9/10

Some Kind of Heaven was released on January 15, 2021 and is currently streaming on Hulu.