(2 of 4)
In any season, On Golden Pond would be welcome. Like last year's Ordinary People, the film addresses itself seriously and intelligently, without sermon or sociology, to an inescapable human issue: in this case, finding a decent ending for a life. By inviting audiences to contemplate the struggle of two attractively idiosyncratic old parties coming to terms with mortality, On Golden Pond gently requires them to confront that same inevitability in themselves. In short, those serene images of the film's opening are deceptive; age is not entirely golden on Golden Pond; dark currents flow just beneath its surface.
As the lives of Norman Thayer Jr. and his wife Ethel unfold, it becomes apparent that they have been spared none of the vicissitudes of aging except poverty. He is a retired professor, and there is obviously good breeding and a bit of money in their backgrounds. But the isolation of old age is upon them. No close friends are left on the pond; their only child Chelsea has been estranged from her father since childhood and now almost never comes home. Divorced, childless, she is living the worrisome ad hoc life of the fortyish woman who is still trying to find herself. The promise of a visit from her before the summer ends does not cheer Norman.
But then, it seems, nothing could. He suffers from angina; he suffers from the thought of his approaching 80th birthday that is to be the occasion for Chelsea's return; he suffers from a constant preoccupation with death. "Don't you have anything else to think about?" his wife inquires. "Nothing quite as interesting," he answers. There is a bitterness as well as wit in that reply, as there is in most of Norman's sinkerball deliveries. But bitter or not, jokes are Norman's last line of defense, for if he is afraid of dying, he also dreads living mentally and physically diminished. He can't remember things—the faces in an old photograph near the phone or, for that matter, why he picked up the phone in the first place. He can no longer do simple chores—can't repair the screen door, can't start a fire in the fireplace without imperiling the house. One day Ethel, seeking to get him stirring, sends him out to pick berries. He becomes confused, can't recall the turns in the road and stumbles home in shame. In one of the film's most moving moments, he confesses to Ethel why he returned so quickly: "I was scared to death—that's why I came running back. To see your pretty face, to feel safe."
In his wife's deliberately overstated response—she insists he is still her "knight in shining armor"—there is irony.
For as Norman's apologist and mediator between him and his daughter, him and the world, she has become the defender of his faltering faith in himself and the emotional stability of their narrowing world.