Not Done Yet

Speed freak: Anthony Hopkins in The World's Fastest Indian. Courtesy Odeon Films.

To call Burt Munro a “senior” feels too blandly neutral — even if he is 62 during the events depicted in director Roger Donaldson’s new biopic, The World’s Fastest Indian. Anthony Hopkins’s uncharacteristically low-key portrayal of Munro doesn’t make the Kiwi motorcycle enthusiast out to be a “geezer” or a “coot,” either. “Codger” isn’t the nicest word, but it does a better job of embodying Munro’s affable nature and eccentric habits, which weren’t always appreciated by his neighbours in the town of Invercargill, New Zealand. The word also alludes to the fact that Hopkins’s Munro is far livelier than most elderly characters we see on screen.

A retired engineer who lived alone, Munro spent most of his days and nights in his garage, tinkering with a motorcycle, the Indian Scout of the title. In 1962, he wheeled his 40-year-old bike out of his garage and took it to the other side of the world. He hoped to ride it at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah during Speedweek, when the world’s fastest vehicles are put to the test.

In The World’s Fastest Indian, Munro encounters many people, including bemused U.S. immigration officials, dumbstruck fellow riders and a sweet-hearted drag queen. None of them know what to make of the loquacious Kiwi or his curious obsession. Despite the age and idiosyncrasies of both the Indian Scout and its rider, Munro would set a land speed record. (He died in 1978.)

A veteran New Zealander filmmaker who had big Hollywood hits with No Way Out and Cocktail, Donaldson made a previous documentary about Munro called Offerings to the God of Speed (1971). As is the case with many biopics, The World’s Fastest Indian isn’t wholly accurate. For instance, it actually took Munro several visits to Bonneville to establish a record in his category of bikes. And while he seems quite solitary in the film, he did have a large family that included several children from his first marriage, which ended in the late 1940s. An easy-going blend of underdog tale, road movie and old-fashioned crowd-pleaser, The World’s Fastest Indian is charming for its gentle humour and Hopkins’s warm, generous performance. Prone to bombast ever since his Oscar-winning turn as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), the veteran actor proves how good he can be when he isn’t feeding on human flesh or the scenery.

The film’s most remarkable quality, however, may not be immediately apparent to viewers who are many years away from enjoying seniors’ discounts. The World’s Fastest Indian presents an elderly character as a full-fledged person, with strengths, frailties and a sexual appetite. This codger has a libido, which distinguishes him from most of the seniors in the movies. Generally relegated to the edges of stories and scenes, they are parents and grandparents before they are people. Very rarely are they the lead characters.

A notable exception is Cynthia Scott’s The Company of Strangers (also called Strangers in Good Company), a largely improvised story of eight elderly women who bond while stranded on a trip in the Quebec countryside. A National Film Board production, the film became a surprise international hit in 1990, grossing more than $4 million outside Canada. There’s also David Lynch’s The Straight Story, the true-life tale of a 73-year-old man who travels across America by lawn mower to see his estranged brother. It may be the most surprising film in Lynch’s very strange canon just because it’s so sweet.

When most movies broach the subject of aging, they treat it with a combination of denial, disgust, fear and ridicule, especially whenever filmmakers get near one of cinema’s last taboos — geriatric sex. Donaldson presents this side of Munro in a manner that’s refreshingly matter-of-fact. Something of a rake, Munro accepts a gentle kiss from a new transvestite friend in Los Angeles and ends up in bed with a widow when his car breaks down near her farm. Munro may have some trouble with a weak heart and a pesky prostate, but he’s otherwise doing just fine for an old fellow in the days before Viagra.

While Hopkins is six years older than Munro was in 1962, it’s unusual to see him play a character like this. For one thing, Munro is more rambunctious than the sexless grandfather types Hopkins portrayed in films like Hearts in Atlantis and Proof. Nor does Munro belong alongside the actor’s characters in Meet Joe Black, The Edge and The Human Stain — aging lions who struggle to recapture the lost vitality of youth (sometimes with the help of younger lovers, like Nicole Kidman in The Human Stain) and rage against the dying of the light. Munro is more comfortable in his skin, liver spots and all.

Few male stars in their golden years have proved willing to undermine the screen personas they worked so hard to establish. For much of the ’80s and ’90s, Michael Douglas and Sean Connery often starred as romantic leads alongside co-stars young enough to be their grandchildren. In the recent action flop Firewall, the 62-year-old Harrison Ford tried to maintain his tough-guy image with risible results. For more insightful reflections on life after 60, you have to look to Clint Eastwood, who’s explored themes of aging and mortality in works as diverse as the comedy Space Cowboys and last year’s Oscar coup Million Dollar Baby, as well as Paul Newman, who gave a richly textured performance as a Munro-like codger in Nobody’s Fool.

A fine balance: Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt. Photo Claudette Barius/AFP/Getty Images.

Jack Nicholson, who has retained his rebellious image deep into his 60s, earned acclaim for playing a depressed retiree in About Schmidt. A sour portrait of life in middle America, Alexander Payne’s mean-spirited film invites the audience to share Schmidt’s disgust at the world. That disgust is particularly acute when Schmidt gets into a hot tub with a naked Kathy Bates. Coloured by Nicholson’s reputation as a ladies’ man who prefers far younger ladies, the possibility of a sexual encounter between Schmidt and Bates’s lusty widow is clearly meant to be repulsive. (In a very classy gesture, Stuff magazine named it No. 1 on a list of “the most ball clenching movie moments of all time.”)

Burt Munro surely wouldn’t have found anything wrong with Bates’s body — he probably would have been happy to have another adventure. The World’s Fastest Indian’s openness on the topic of geriatric sex is reminiscent of two other recent films that portray late-life desire with a frankness that would scare the hell out of anyone who cackled at About Schmidt. An elegant drama by Australian director Paul Cox, Innocence (2000) concerns two erstwhile lovers who get the chance to rekindle their passions later in life. The romantic complications that ensue are as fraught and intense as anything on a TV teen-soap, proving that love has a way of confounding folks of any age.

A gutsy film written by Hanif Kureishi and directed by Roger Michell, The Mother (2003) portrayed the sexual awakening of May (Anne Reid), a repressed English grandmother. The man who aids May in her journey of rediscovery is played by Daniel Craig — aka the new James Bond — making The Mother all the more radical. In one of several sexually explicit scenes, May tells Darren (Craig), “I thought no one would ever touch me again, apart from the undertaker.”

The Mother ruthlessly dissects preconceptions that adult children have about their parents’ lives, especially their sex lives. Like The World’s Fastest Indian, The Mother refutes the assumption that aging brings wisdom, security and stability; it could just as easily bring emotions and ambitions that are far more disruptive and unsettling. That may be the biggest reason movies avoid examining the lives of seniors too closely.

When May tells Darren about the fear and uncertainty she feels, he replies, “You imagine people getting less frightened as they get older. You think they’d be able to deal with things better.”

May’s response is halting, perhaps tempered by the knowledge of what her hunky lover wants to hear. “No… well, perhaps… yes, they do.”

He gives her a smile that seems to reassure them both. “Something to look forward to.”

The World’s Fastest Indian opens March 10 in Toronto and Vancouver.

Jason Anderson is a Toronto writer.

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