(courtesy IMP Awards)
Hollywood of chock full of movies based on real events, and given the predisposition and often narrative need to embellish even the most impressive of real world events, you often have to wonder just how much truth lurks within the folds of the often inventive storyline.
In the case of Thelma, written and directed by Josh Margolin, there’s actually quite a lot of truth hiding within this thoroughly entertaining movie which is based on the life of the writer and director’s 104-year-old grandmother who has, he says in an article on Australia’s ABC News network, “has always been fiercely independent”.
For starters, Margolin and his grandmother, who is indeed named Thelma so there’s nominative truth in advertising right there, are very close, as is depicted in the film, and he is devoted to her, and has been all his life, which has given him a ringside seat to how amazing his grandmother is.
“She’s had so many illnesses over the course of life that she’s beaten,” Josh told ABC Entertainment.
“It’s a testament to her resilience. I’ve watched her get hit and bounce back, all the way from her 70s, into her 80s and 90s and now her hundreds.” (ABC News)
You can see this closeness and this admiration in the film which stars the impressive June Squibb as the eponymous protagonist in her first leading role at the sprightly age of 94, an achievement which is right up there with the real Thelma.
So, tick, tick, tick – we have a real life tough-as-guts grandmother who has made it through a hard life, has the love and attentive care of a devoted grandson and whose relationship is the central part of each of their lives.
Hollywood is, or at least Margolin in the midst of it, is channellinf quite bit of veracity into this story.
Next up is the narrative itself which concerns a woman who is not easily fooled and who has fended off quite a few scammers in the past.
But in the central impelling scene of the film, where Thelma gets a panicked, agitated call from a person claiming to be her grandson, she falls hook, line and sinker for the scam, primarily because, in this instance, it plays to how much Thelma loves her grandson which has already been firmly established in a film full of warm rapport and wittily affectionate banter.
The caller, supposedly her grandson Daniel (Fred Hechinger), has been in an accident and needs money transferred for his bail; when Thelma queries why he sounds different, it’s passed off as changes wrought by a nasal injury which Margolin says was part of a strategy which pretty covered all the bases, and which convinces Thelma in the movie to post $10,000 which she then spends the rest of the film trying to recover.
In real life, however, there was a happier, far less complicated (but not good for movies ending).
Thelma narrowly avoided losing a chunk of her savings but Josh says the experience left her shaken. (ABC News)
It’s at this point that real life, rather wonderfully, gives way to some inspired creative imagination and the Thelma of the film, angry that in her first years of independence in her entire life – she observes at one point that she went from her parents straight to her husband and has only really had to stand on her own two feet for a couple of years – decides to head across town to get her money back.
Quite how she, highly entertainingly does that, must be left to the film, but it’s an inspired comedic joy which not only gives audiences a succession of genuine laughs along the way but also an illuminating insight into what it’s like to be an elderly person and to feel your life, and your agency to control or influence any of it, slipping right through your fingers.
For all the hilarious adventuring and plucky bravery, and Thelma’s take-no-prisoners attitude, Thelma also delivers a poignant series of moments where she and her friend Ben (Richard Roundtree), in the middle of delivering low key but highly vengeance of those that have done Thelma wrong, come face-to-face wit how little individual choice of action they have left to them.
The truth of the matter is that not everyone has the ability or the will to take back their loss of control like Thelma, in real life or the film, does, and many people, including some depicted in the film, are left to slowly slip out of life’s exit with little in the way of agency, fulfillment or companionship.
It’s sobering but it also underscores how amazing Thelma really is, especially when she has to contend with a daughter (Parker Posey) and son-in-law (Clark Greg) who genuinely love her but seem inclined to practise risk averseness in just about every aspect of their lives and those of the people they love.
Sure it makes you safe but what’s left after that?
Not much, you suspect, so you can well understand why Thelma, with two years of true independence under her belt, wants to handle things her own way, even if it means deceiving those she loves.
She wants her life back, and she wants it her way, and it’s that enthusiastic tenacity that fills every last scene and inspired piece of dialogue in a film which is as much an affirmation of the power of independence and choice as it is a love song from a grandson to his hugely-admired grandmother.
Thelma is funny, it’s a garrulous joy and it is profoundly moving and thoughtfully serious too, anchored by some impressive performances, an empowering sense that it’s never too late to live your life your way and an intoxicatingly alive feeling that no matter what comes against you, if you want to, you can take back the power and rewrite your way and come out the other side with not only your independence intact but a wonderful sense that anything is possible, even when society tells such thoughts should be left far behind you.