Interview With “Some Kind of Heaven” Filmmaker Lance Oppenheim

The sky is a deep shade of indigo. Beneath the towering palm bushes is a person standing upright in an empty pool. He closes his eyes and strikes his arms in repetitive outward and inward motions. He seems to be meditating. As if by some divine pressure, flashes of lightning illuminate the sky behind him.

The person within the pool is Reggie Kincer, one in every of 130,000 residents residing within the Sumter County, Florida, retirement neighborhood referred to as the Villages.

On this bewildering neighborhood, residents get pleasure from a cornucopia of actions like golf, rowing, and synchronized-swimming lessons. There are eating places, retailers, and nightclubs to ensure you by no means must enterprise out into the actual world once more.

For 18 months, between 2018 and 2019, filmmaker Lance Oppenheim hung out in the neighborhood, having access to the intimacies of Florida’s friendliest hometown. His documentary, Some Sort of Heaven, affords a glimpse into the lives of 4 retirees residing out their golden years on the Villages.

Oppenheim, who grew up in Weston, remembers listening to tales concerning the Villages when he was in center college. Like many tales youngsters swap, they won’t all the time be fully factual, however the fitting story can pique your curiosity.

“I had heard a rumor that I later realized was not true, however I had heard about this retirement neighborhood that had one of many highest charges of STDs out of wherever within the state,” Oppenheim tells New Instances. “Once I was youthful, I used to be fascinated by [the Villages] as a result of it appeared prefer it was the final word hedonistic playground for seniors to go to towards the tip of their lives.”

The huge retirement neighborhood sits about an hour away from Orlando and is also known as “Disney World for retirees.” A lot of its buildings appear like units you’d discover at a Hollywood theme park or alongside the Magic Kingdom’s Most important Avenue. In reality, old-timey façades within the Villages are achieved on function. Because the documentary divulges, all the neighborhood relies on “faux histories made up over a bottle of scotch.”

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Reggie Kincer in Some Sort of Heaven

Photograph courtesy of Magnolia Footage

The 24-year-old filmmaker had beforehand directed three brief documentaries that adopted the lives of people that lived in unconventional areas and locations. The South Florida native was fascinated by how seemingly atypical folks lead surprising lives. So when it got here time to select a subject for his Harvard senior thesis, he rediscovered the Villages.

“I used to be desirous about tales in Florida and what I might do if I went house for a summer season. What might I movie and discover?” Oppenheim says.

In the summertime of 2018, Oppenheim headed for Central Florida with a digital camera, a pocket book, and an Airbnb rental.

Earlier than filming, he hung out on the neighborhood, attending to know a few of its inhabitants. Image a tall, skinny, twentysomething with thick-rimmed glasses going to events and enjoying pickleball with white-haired retirees of their 70s and 80s.

Oppenheim needed the complete Villages expertise, so he’d handle methods to get invited locations.

“I might present as much as every part,” he says.

He finally realized the lay of the land and obtained to know the native characters.

“It felt as if each particular person I used to be surrounding myself with was desperately attempting to have as a lot enjoyable as doable,” Oppenheim says. “Each minute of the day, in the event that they weren’t having enjoyable, one thing was fallacious.”

Naturally, he began to hunt out those that weren’t having the time of their lives. He got down to reply the query, “What occurs when a fantasyland turns into a nightmare?”

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The retirees of the Villages

Photograph courtesy of Magnolia Footage

The documentary primarily follows 4 people: Reggie, the lightning-summoning tai chi grasp, and his spouse Anne; Barbara Lochiatto, a current widow who lives alone; and a drifter named Dennis Dean, residing out of his van and seeking to rating a rich spouse.

“It was very enjoyable working with all of them,” Oppenheim says. “It was much more of a collaborative expertise than every other movie I had made.”

Having beforehand labored with the New York Instances on three brief documentaries for the newspaper’s Op-Doc sequence, Oppenheim utilized for a grant to make Some Kind of Heaven a reality. Initially, the filmmaker says, he meant to supply a brief documentary, however as he spent an increasing number of time on the Villages, the thought grew right into a full-length function. Ultimately, acclaimed filmmaker Darren Aronofsky signed on as a producer, and the movie premiered on the Sundance Movie Competition in 2020, the place it was picked up for distribution by Magnolia Footage.

On the finish of thenearly two-and-a-half-year journey of constructing Some Sort of Heaven, Oppenheim developed a newfound sense of compassion.

“I completely perceive why somebody at that age would wish to be in a spot that reminds them of their youth,” the younger filmmaker explains.

“In my thoughts, these aren’t previous folks. They’re simply people who find themselves going by way of very actual issues in a really unreal, hyper-real place.”

Some Sort of Heaven. Opens in choose theaters in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Seashore on Friday, January 8; obtainable through on demand starting Friday, January 15.