Stories of a Generation, the new Netflix series, is something rather remarkable: a dialogue between generations, a series of interviews with 18 over-70s conducted by young filmmakers under 30. One of the oldies is Pope Francis, who has called for the young and the old to talk to each other more. The series is based on his book, Sharing the Wisdom of Time. He agreed to take part on the basis he would be one contributor among many; his observations, prompted by questions from a fellow Jesuit, Fr Antonio Spadaro, are interspersed throughout the four programmes arranged around the themes of love, dreams, work and struggle. But it’s not a hierarchical project. And while there are some big names among the interviewees – Martin Scorsese and Jane Goodall – all of them are allowed to speak for themselves. The effect of this quiet insight into individual lives is extraordinarily moving.
The participants are from five continents, speaking four languages, and there are some dramatic stories among them. Estela de Carlotto, one of the Grandmothers of the Disappeared Little Grandchildren, from Argentina, searched for 36 years to find her grandson, born to her daughter Laura the day before she was murdered by the Junta. Another is a mother whose daughter fought against the environmental despoliation of the lands of tribal peoples and was murdered in turn. They showed tenacity and dignity – and pain. There is Vito Fiorino, an ice-cream seller from Lampedusa who rescued 47 migrants whose boat capsized in the sea and now has a strong bond with the young people he saved, especially one young man whom he now thinks of as a son – which makes up for his relationship with his own children, whom he never hugged.
From America there’s a redemptive story of Betty Kilby Fisher, a black woman who takes her granddaughter Gaby to meet a woman whose ancestors enslaved Betty’s; a friendship is born. But what we learned is that her brave and successful bid to join a white school as a teenager and end educational segregation effectively came to an end when she was gang-raped by fellow pupils; she was never quite the same again. Astonishingly, she’s not corroded by bitterness but this viewer wanted justice done, even now.
Most of the lives documented here are quietly wonderful. There’s a couple who took up tango classes late in life and we see them going through the steps in their kitchen, the wife rather larger than the husband. It turns out that the pope can dance the tango too.
The most moving interview is with Danilo Mena Hernandez, a poor farmer in the Costa Rican jungle whose wife died, leaving him with two blind, disabled sons. “When I am gone who will look after them, take them to the bathroom?” he wonders in the dark watches of the night. Meanwhile, he takes them to the sea, where they feel the water on their toes and are happy. He’s one of the few who talks about God; he thinks that the birdsong at sunrise is their way of greeting their Maker. If some practical good comes out of this series, it would be for some philanthropist to ensure that the poor man’s sons are cared for when he dies.
Although religion is nowhere explicit, the series’ message is plain: that all lives are wonderful, that the old have much to share with the young, that ordinary individuals are capable of extraordinary acts of courage and love, that everyone has a story to tell. Indeed, love extends beyond our own species: Jane Goodall, whose inspiration as a naturalist came from reading Tarzan of the Apes as a girl, recounts the story of a chimpanzee who was unduly attached to his mother – when she died, crossing a stream, he held onto her fingers as he used to when she was alive; three weeks later he died – of grief, we can only assume. Jane Goodall’s relationship with these creatures is itself testimony to love.
There are some minor papal reveals: that Francis worked in a hosiery factory when he was 12; that his reaction to the death of Prokofiev at 14 was to yearn to be creative; that he is lazy and his instinct is to avoid conflict (you’d never think it). He tells again a story (originally from Grimm) about what happens when a family excludes the elderly dribbling grandfather from the family table. The father finds his own little son making a table for him to eat apart too.
If any reader is willing to provide funding for a carer for the blind sons of Danilo Mena Hernandez, who appears in the documentary, after his death, please get in touch with the Catholic Herald.
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