Last week I read the award winning book by Kent Haruf, "Our Souls at Night." I loved it.
Last night we saw the film on Netflix. I liked it but, for me, the ending was very different from the book.
It's a simple story. Addie, a widow in a little town in Colorado walks to her widowed neighbor Louis's house to offer him a proposition. Would he like to come over some nights and sleep with her.
It's not about sex and it never will get to be about sex. This is the part younger people don't understand. The proposition is about loneliness . It leads to love.
Later, Addie's troubled son, Gene, drops his seven year old son on Addie's doorstep. Gene has no use for Louis. Addie and Louis both love the little boy. But toward the end Gene makes Addie choose between her grandson and Louis.
Eventually, she falls and breaks her hip. Gene has her taken by ambulance from the little town and the house she's lived in for 48 years and put in an assisted living facility in Denver.
The film and book are slow moving (like the couple) and filled with symbolism. Addie looks at her close friend, ten years her senior, and sees herself. In a heartbreaking scene at the end, Louis stands at his kitchen sink, washing one fork, one cup and one plate.
The film ends a bit differently than the book. Gene is clearly furious with his mother Addie for the trauma he suffered as a child. She is guilted into leaving Louis and devoting all of her limited energy to her son and grandson.
How realistic is this story line? I think it happens often in real life. How many people do you know in their 70s and 80s who are still cleaning up their kid's messes - including raising grandchildren? How many grown children do you know who are completely disgusted with the concept of their parent having a love life? Why do they feel that way?
On a lighter note, as I was reading the book I was having trouble picturing Addie and Louis as this doddering old couple when I knew they were being played in the film by ever sexy Jane Fonda and Robert Redford. But I was happily surprised to see them last night. They were softened up and looked reasonably old and doddering. I thought Jane looked much softer as Addie in her frizzy white hair and old lady clothes. Redford, on the other hand still had his disturbing (for an 81 year old) red hair and eyebrows.
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