(4 of 4)
When Chelsea reappears, the old man even manages a tentative truce, acceptance of the sort Ethel has been struggling to bring about. Whether that truce signals a real reconciliation the movie does not definitively promise. But if it refuses to go for a big, emotional finish that would leave its audience awash in grateful tears, neither does it leave them without hope.
With all their visitors departed, the last bags and boxes stowed in the station wagon, Norman and Ethel go down to the pond to say goodbye to the loons that have been their summer companions. The bird family turns out to be diminished too—just the mother and father are left. Fonda eyes them and in the wry, dry voice that has drawled through our consciousness for almost half a century, speaks a kind of generational epitaph, weary but accepting. "Babies are all grown up . . . and moved to Los Angeles or somewhere."
The spirit in which he speaks—realistic, humorous, but with feeling—is precisely what claims one's respect for On Golden Pond. When it sometimes seems the whole society has spiritually decamped for Tinseltown, the movie offers the hope that people can come home again—at least for a visit.
—By Richard Schickel