Welcome to another entry in the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!
I've been meaning to watch today's film for some time now and kept putting it off. I remember as a six-year-old hearing about this one and thinking it sounded like an "old people movie," probably because it's about a couple of old people.
Today's subject is On Golden Pond, starring Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, and Jane Fonda, in Henry's final film role (He passed away only eight months after its release). Based on the play by Ernest Thompson, On Golden Pond tells the story of an elderly couple spending the summer at their vacation cottage by a New England lake. Norman is about to turn 80 and is beginning to suffer from dementia and angina, and his wife Ethel struggles to convince him it's worth hanging on for a while longer. Their daughter Chelsea arrives with her fiancé Bill and his son Billy, and we learn pretty quickly that Chelsea and Norman's relationship has long been strained (She even calls him by his first name instead of "Dad"). Chelsea and Bill take a trip to Europe and leave Billy in the care of his soon-to-be step-grandparents for a month, giving Norman a chance to learn how to be an actual parent, thus softening his sardonic, grim worldview.
The film's greatest strength is its two lead performances; Hepburn and Fonda deliver pretty stellar work here, Fonda especially. Their relationship feels like an authentic one, built over five or six decades. Like most grandparents they bicker but there's a pure sweetness underneath. Norman has little patience for life and even less for sentimentality, avoiding expressions of emotion by guarding himself with sarcasm and petty insults. When Bill Sr. tries to get to know him, Norman belittles him instead, and only after Bill calls him out on it does Norman seem to gain some respect for his prospective son-in-law. Ethel thinks so much of Norman she seems to constantly be apologizing for his cold demeanor, to the point that their daughter doesn't feel supported by her mom.
And that brings me to the film's weakness, its formulaic, rather shallow scripting. I assume not much was changed from stage to screen, as this feels so much like a stage play I could actually picture what numerous scenes probably looked like on Broadway. The dialogue lacks the realism that would've made it feel more at home in this medium. It often plays to the cheap seats as it were, when cinematic subtlety is called for.
The most egregious example is a third-act breaking point scene when Chelsea returns from Europe to find that Norman has bonded with little Billy, and becomes so jealous she never got to have that kind of relationship with her father that she almost instantly escalates to "He's a selfish son of a bitch," drawing a slap from her mother. To me this scene felt unearned because the estranged father-daughter relationship wasn't given ample time to marinate onscreen. We're told there's generational trauma but we aren't shown nearly enough of it. Thus this blowup and its later resolution doesn't carry the weight it should. I'm actually surprised Jane Fonda was nominated for a supporting Oscar, as her character is very underwritten and thus her performance feels inauthentic. It's even more disappointing considering she bought the rights to this film and wanted her father to star in it because it mirrored their own troubled relationship. What should've been the film's most intriguing thread is shortchanged in favor of a saccharine one involving Norman and Billy.
Child actor Doug McKeon gives a strong performance as the headstrong, slightly vulgar Billy who initially has no interest in spending a month with his new grandparents, fully aware he's being dumped on them while his dad and stepmom gallivant across the ocean. But Norman wins him over by matching his vulgarity and by teaching him how to fish, and the pair soon embark on a quest to catch Walter, the largest trout in the lake. Their scenes together are very well done and supply the film's best passages.
Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn each won a well-deserved Oscar for their work here, and with lesser lead stars I think On Golden Pond would be a near-miss for me. But fortunately the lead performances ring true, making up for the script's lack of invention or emotional depth.
I'll give On Golden Pond *** out of ****.
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