The Golden Pond Gospel

When great actors utter wonderful wisdom...

Katherine Hepburn and Henry Fonda          On Golden Pond

Was the plot great in On Golden Pond?  Or did great actors like Hepburn and Fonda make it so?  There was just something in the dialogue, the acting between them, that echoed a wisdom that went beyond the plot itself.  Both in their old age brought out the truth of old age which we saw in them.  Fonda suffers from dementia, wanders out to the end of the road, and we see him panicking because he forgets where he is and what he is doing.  The movie ends with Fond collapsing with heart pain on the front porch.  But most of all are the Loons who themselves age and Billy the young teen snags one which has died.  "Norman," asks Billy, "are you afraid to die?"  Fonda barks back--"What kind of a question is that?  Why do we always have to be asking questions?"  Three months after shooting the movie--Henry Fonda died. 

I must say that the part of the movie which rang truest for me was when Norman sets the cabin on fire. Billy runs in, throws a bucket of water on it, and then Norman complains because he has made a mess.  He cusses at Billy and stomps off.  Enter Ethel played Hepburn.  She tells Billy:

"Sometimes he has to roar like an old lion to remember that he can still do it.  Billy, sometimes you have to look straight at a person and just remember that he is doing the best he can."

As I watched this movie--I told myself that Hepburn and Fond were doing exactly that--the best they could to show us this side of the older years.