CYBER-SENIORS

For the past couple of years as the clock seems to ticking faster than ever, one of Bette Davis’s more famous quotes has been ringing in my ears.  It’s her declaration that ‘old age is not for sissies’.   It’s a notable sentiment that has been flourishing in the cinema too with movies such as ‘Young @ Heart’ with its wonderful choir of seniors who with enormous zest and unceasing passion thrilled  the world with their renditions of punk and rock songs.

This new movie from Canadian filmmaker Saffron  Cassaday follows her two younger sisters efforts to bring the wonders of the world wide web to a group of Seniors living in assisted care homes in Toronto.  This group (the youngest is 77 years old) vaguely know that computers can link you to the outside world but beyond that they no very little indeed. Learning to turn the machines on is their very first lesson.

The wary high school kids who have been roped in as tutors show the utmost patience with their new pupils who, due to their age, tend to forget things that they are taught very quickly so its often a case of going over some of the basic information time and time again. Nearly all of them are thrilled to learn that this thing called Facebook can link them with their own family who are very infrequent visitors to this slightly abandoned group. One wants to rekindle with the daughter he hasn’t seen for years, whilst another would like to maybe meet a man her age to ‘do activities’ with. When one of the musically bent old ladies expresses an interest in hearing the Hallelujah Chorus, her face is a picture of sheer joy as listens to it after finding it online.

The liveliest of the group is Schura who has an eccentric approach to cooking (she makes toasted sandwiches with her iron) and she is inveigled into making a YouTube video demonstrating how she makes lunch. It’s a instant success so it is decided to encourage more of them to make their own videos on whatever hobbies and interests they have and award a prize to the person who gets the most ‘likes’ on YouTube.

The first thing that Marion a 92 year old tells anyone is that she still has all her own teeth (and NO, I am not jealous) so her young teacher devises a rap song just about that for her to perform wearing the obligatory baseball cap backwards. Some of the residents are taking this new activity very seriously and as the competition heats up Schura is seen on the phone trying to drum up more ‘hits’ to insure first place.

It’s a touching endeavour and linking these two groups of people at the beginning and at the ending of their own lives seems to be a rewarding experience for them all.  The fact that the disabled minister now doesn’t have to spend the best part of a day going to his Bank as he can now do it all online, is just one of the many ways the kids have helped improve the seniors lives. Most importantly they have helped them re-connect to the families and friends that so many felt were slipping away from them.

If I have one ‘but’ about Cassaday’s film is that I wish she had focused less on the lessons themselves and gave us more footage of this rather wonderful bunch of old people who were so desperate to share their stories.  That said, I would so heartily recommend this heartwarming and very touching film that successfully demonstrated how wonderful life is when we bridge the generation gap like this so successfully. And for showing us that Bette Davis was so right too.

★★★★★★★★