A Radical Idea

Two things happen when we grow old. First, biology betrays us. Tasks we could accomplish with ease become burdensome, while our once agile bodies fail and weaken. Worse, we are no longer attached to the social fabric, but instead, fall off into our own little insular worlds. Concerns become smaller, and reality ceases to exist outside our own frail faculty’s realm of perception.

But this is not the case for 95-year-old Lucille Alpert and her 81-year-old pal Inja Lloyd. When we meet these fast friends in Laura Gabbert’s amazing documentary, Sunset Story (new to DVD from Capital Entertainment), they are taking part in a protest. No, not a nursing home sit-in, but a full-blown rally, with picket signs and slogans. Throughout their long lives, Lucille and Inja have been activists, more concerned about the world’s problems than their personal needs. As a result, they have found themselves residents of Sunset Hall, a Los Angeles retirement facility specifically designed for ex-radicals.

Almost everyone who lives here has in one way or another bucked the system and fought for political and social change. Soldiers and teachers, blacklisted writers and bohemian artist types, are now joined in a community that holds weekly meetings where grievances are aired and changes are challenged. Debate can break out over dinner, and you’re as likely to hear a roundtable discussion on the White House as an argument about the snack menu. Sunset Hall seems to be pulsing with vitality, elderly agitators just looking for a good cause to get up and support. The problem is, very few of the residents have the physical ability to do so.

One of the amazing things about Sunset Story is how quickly it twists your expectations. When we are introduced to Lucille and Inja, hearing their remarkable life stories and snippets of their philosophical views (Lucille believes all people are basically bisexual, while Inja insists sex is an unimportant, over-hyped fact of life), we think we are in for an informative and quite intriguing biography. And for a while, as the screen fills with snapshots from the past and the gals glamorize their various accomplishments, this is just what we get.

Yet, about halfway through, director Gabbert does something quite remarkable. One night, after she bids the primary subjects (Lucile and Inja) goodnight, the filmmaker follows a mini-drama that erupts suddenly. An incredibly disoriented woman, her speech a mix of bemusement and real fear, starts to disintegrate emotionally, ranting that she feels unloved and persecuted. As a staff nurse tries to calm her down, the look of abject horror on the face of this frail, frightened lady is enough to break your heart—and get your attention. It is at this moment that Sunset Story reveals another agenda. This isn’t a movie about retired activists. It’s a stunning meditation on the battle between mission and mortality.

From here on, Lucille and Inja spend less time discussing diplomacy and democracy, but reveal their concerns with death and disease. Inja has a very bad heart condition. Lucille keeps her maladies to herself, but in one riveting scene, we learn why she is so tired and cranky all the time—she is slowly dying of esophageal cancer. She can’t sleep at night. She can’t swallow. She can’t eat and weighs only 105 pounds. Naturally, this makes Inja depressed. Lucille can see her best friend falling into the trap of anger and isolation that comes with the creeping specter of death.

More than that, though, both women understand that another facet of their lives is slipping away as well. Seeing themselves as icons for a certain type of concerned world citizen, one that has long since stopped caring about protecting the planet, they know they cannot carry the entire social conscious of a nation of their backs. And so they try to achieve small things: celebrating ethnically diverse holidays, pushing to register Sunset Hall staff and residents to vote. It’s a battle they are bound to lose, in time. Certainly, part of the reason why Inja becomes so upset with Lucille is that her previous selfless attitude toward everyone else has now turned self-centered and bitter. The friendship is jeopardized, but mortality is also robbing Lucy of her physical and idealistic verve.

Already out of place because of their advanced ages and medical concerns, Lucille, Inja, and their fellow nursing home residents stand out even more so because of a continuing desire to live a life free of governmental restraints and diminished civil liberties. When a visiting folk singer leads the community in a rousing rendition of the ‘60s protest staple, “Where Have all the Flowers Gone?”, it’s as if every person in the room is dipped into an instant fountain of youth. While faces still betray the scars of lives hard-spent, their eyes light up with the optimism of that crazy counterculture that thought it could make a difference.

And so, what begins as a remarkable story of two old soldiers in the war on apathy turns into a solemn look at the ravages and revenge of age. While Sunset Hall’s fascinating history gets far more attention in the DVD features (in commentaries and featurettes, where we learn about its noble past, current problems, and various residents), what Gabbert captures is the final stages in that flawed concept known as individual resolve. Inja and Lucille remain the last link between Sunset Hall’s dynasty of dissent and a largely indifferent population. They are literally, the last of a dying breed.

Sunset Story argues that the well-examined life is not worth giving up, at least, not easily. Lucille Alpert and Inja Lloyd were radical before it was chic, raised families on their own, and made differences in the lives of thousands of people. But as this insightful documentary points out, perhaps their most important impacts were on each other.