Representation of the midlife crisis in films: old clichés with new cheerfulness

The cinema was already talking about the midlife crisis before the term existed. Change is what matters, as many of the films show.

Marcello Mastroianni in Fellini’s “8 1/2” from 1963, a classic for questioning one’s own existence Photo: imago

The midlife crisis in the cinema is no longer what it used to be. And like most things that are ritually mourned with this phrase, upon closer inspection it’s not such a shame. What makes the films on the topic all the more interesting: What is more meaningful than the crisis itself is what changes in it over the decades.

For example, there are the films by Federico Fellini, which are often the first to come to mind: “La dolce vita” from 1960 and “8 1/2” from 1963 – both of which were made before the Canadian psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques wrote his essay “Death and the Midlife Crisis” coined the term in 1965. Things like the questioning of one’s own existence, the onset of regret in view of what has been achieved, restlessness and the melancholy over the loss of one’s own youth can be found in Fellini’s work without labels, and with a modern precision that amazes every time we see it again.

No wonder that the example of these films still resonates today, not only in Italian films, such as Paolo Sorrentino’s “La grande bellezza” (2013), which referred to “La dolce vita”, but also, for example, in the Oscar winner from 2015, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s “Birdman”, whose phantasmagoric inspection of a creative and life crisis proves its inner similarity to “8 1/2”, especially in the structural sense.

Jeans and sneakers

The most obvious difference between the films mentioned then and now is the age of the protagonists: the middle of life, innocently conceived by midlife crisis inventor Elliott Jaques as the mid to late 30s, has now shifted to a vague “45+”. , which includes people in their early 60s, at least as long as they wear jeans and sneakers. The image of the “middle” has transformed into one of the border: the one between the age at which one still feels young and the one at which this finally stops.

What the previous selection of titles also reveals is the predominantly male (and white) character of the concept. Even in ensemble films like Alan Alda’s “The Four Seasons” (1981) or Lawrence Kasdan’s “The Big Chill” (1983), which describe the existential crises of entire circles of friends, it is the male egos that are highlighted as exemplary . Marcello Mastroianni was told at one point in “La dolce vita” that he was not in the world to be happy.

Optimize life

For men in the 80s, a great time of cinematic midlife crisis, such a concept of coming to terms with oneself could hardly be more foreign. In the end, it’s always about optimizing life, as they say today. So by overcoming the crisis you can find a new job, a new woman or at least a new meaning in life.

The western comedy “City Slickers” from 1991, for example, exemplifies the little-tarnished belief in successfully overcoming the crisis. Today, pretty much everything about Ron Underwood’s film with Billy Crystal in the lead role seems far more old-fashioned and outdated than the Catholic existentialist film. Artificiality of Fellini. Starting with the patient wife who voluntarily puts aside her own interests so that the husband can go on a western vacation, to the idea of ​​finding a way back to male virtues while driving cattle, to the life advice of a sun-tanned, single person, the cinema and not cowboy role model (Jack Palance) borrowed from reality.

The film’s success at the time can be excused by pointing out that it is a comedy that exposes the inadequacy and outdatedness of its concepts to ridicule – and thus destroys them a little.

Cliché of the middle-aged man

“City Slickers” still enjoys the reputation of a popular classic car, at least in the USA. Unlike “American Beauty” (1999), which was also a critically acclaimed film about the midlife crisis at the time. And not just because of its “canceled” leading actor Kevin Spacey. Here too, the depiction of the clichés of the middle-aged man who desires a show-off car and sex with a younger woman is seen as satire.

Nevertheless, the staging of the hero’s daughter’s school friend as a Lolita variant leaves a bad taste today, as does the thankless role that Annette Bening has to slip into here as an ambitious wife who is frustrating for the man. More than a description of a midlife crisis, “American Beauty” is a portrait of “American creepiness.”

At the same time, Sam Mendes’ film marks a final point. Barely three years later, Sofia Coppola struck a different tone in her “Lost in Translation” (2003). It is true that Coppola’s film cannot fully survive today’s view, which is more sensitive to the representation of genders and other cultures. But it offers a welcome farewell to a certain kind of crisis management: Bill Murray doesn’t have to find a way back to a lost masculinity, but rather he can resign.

In melancholic resignation, however, another way out of the crisis can be discovered: insight into one’s own vulnerability and thus greater openness to the outside, to the foreign, to others.

Liberation from narcissism

Alexander Payne’s “Sideways” (2004) also tells of the midlife crisis as a liberation from narcissism and self-centeredness, in which for Paul Giamatti, as a would-be writer, everything has to go wrong before anything else can go well. The crisis has reached its peak or lowest point when Giamatti, a wine lover deeply disappointed in life and male friendship, finally pours his long-saved, high-priced favorite wine hidden from a plastic cup in a fast food restaurant. Not only have the best-laid plans failed, but one’s own dignity also seems lost.

Licia Maglietta as Rosalba in “Bread and Tulips” by Silvio Soldini: On the way to a new openness Photo: United Archives

The Dane Thomas Vinterberg once again took a new view in his midlife crisis film “Der Rausch” (2020). In it, Mads Mikkelsen experiments with alcohol in a circle of friends, which is treated here as an open question about the sense and nonsense of excess. Can this be used to manage pain? Lonliness? Ambition? Depression? The film lacks an answer, but it gives its hero’s stumbling search a new, very human dignity.

The woman who has to reinvent herself

And what about the women? One of the most beautiful and still unsurpassed films about a woman in midlife crisis comes from 1978 and is made by a man: Paul Mazursky’s “An Unmarried Woman”. Jill Clayburgh plays the woman who is left by her husband for a younger woman and has to find herself again. It’s not just the 70s realism that makes the film special, but also the fact that in the end it’s not just a new man (Alan Bates) who brings her new happiness, but, on the contrary, her insistence on independence.

More recent films like “Under the Tuscan Sun” (2003) or “Eat Pray Love” (2010) still follow the old cliché that happiness can only be complete with new love.

The Italian director Silvio Soldini provided a charming example of the value of openness, both in terms of the new way of life and the ending of the film, with “Bread and Tulips” (2000). The “small” film became a sleeper hit in German cinemas.

The heroine, a good mother from Pescara, finds herself abandoned at a rest stop by her own family during a trip. Instead of waiting, she sets off for her dream city of Venice and tries new things there in a modest but self-chosen setting. It is a completely unspectacular midlife crisis, the experience of which is ultimately characterized by a confident cheerfulness that is incredibly contagious.