The Time of Their Lives

Described as a home "for the active elderly," the facility where these three startlingly sharp women live can more accurately be labeled a resting place for aged intellectuals, to use their own words. "The Time of Their Lives" provides a unique perspective on growing old in its focus not on what we cannot do in our later years but on what we can -- in fact, should and must do with the mental capacities we still have.

The film is hauntingly quiet, mostly devoid of soundtrack, but the women's poetic storytelling provides enough music to the ears. Their profound sense of ethics, right and wrong, and moral responsibility should put many younger, self-described activists to shame. The photography is exquisite, the bucolic setting calming to the viewer, and one can almost smell the daffodils of the Wordsworth poem quoted in the film:

"In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils."