Movie stars from three generations – Brando, De Niro, and Norton, plotting a high-tech heist in Montreal – provided this senior citizen filmgoer with an absorbing two hours of entertainment last weekend.

The film that featured these actors is called “The Score” and has received mixed notices from the critics. For me, however, this movie gets high marks, largely because it displays three such talented stars along the age spectrum.

To see Marlon Brando, now aged 78, on screen inevitably stirs memories of a storied career. In 1947 his performance as Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire” took the American theater by storm, showing new acting possibilities to all aspirants to the stage.

Grant Keener, a friend who was present at the fifth performance of this play on Broadway, remembers vividly the power of Brando’s portrayal. “That night I felt challenged by a presence whose force I as a young male resented but reluctantly admired.” In particular he recalls the audience's gasp when Brando answered Jessica Tandy's line “A gentleman always clears his

dinner things” by cuffing his plate to the floor with “I cleared mine; want me to clear yours?”

When Brando turned to films, his roles in “The Godfather” and “Last Tango in Paris” made him part of cinematic history. The critic Richard Schickel says of Brando: “His shadow now touches every acting class in America, virtually every movie we see, every TV show we tune in.”

It adds to one’s interest in him that Brando has been long targeted by some writers as a magnificent failure. Schickel, for example, writes of “the greatness that might have been.” But this critic adds: “Brando may have resisted his role in history, may even have travestied it, but, in the end, he could not evade it.”

If a quotation attributed to him can be believed, Brando himself realizes the corrupting influence that the film capital of the world had over him. “The only

reason I’m in Hollywood,” he once said, “is that I don’t have the moral courage to refuse the money.”

When he first appears in “The Score,” he is shown wearing a bear-like coat that surrounds his huge girth. The man looks to be encased in fat like some latter-day Henry VIII or, more to the point, the aged Orson Welles. It was shocking to see Brando so far gone to obesity in his old age.

In this film he plays the part of Max, a criminal who does not do jobs himself but specializes in procuring master thieves for the task. In this instance, he persuades Nick, played by Robert De Niro, to steal a precious artifact from the custom house in Montreal. Nick eventually agrees despite a heretofore firm principle of never doing heists in his home city.

De Niro himself is a magnificent movie actor with a long history of success. Aged 58 as of this August 17th, De Niro has a fascinating face especially suited to characters who are up to no good. In this film he is conflicted because of his girlfriend’s willingness to settle down with him in marriage if he will give up his extra-legal activities.

The third star, Edward Norton, turns 32 on August 18th of this year. Though obviously inexperienced compared to the other two, Norton is quickly making a name for himself. A 1991 Yale graduate, he has already received two Academy Award nominations for his early roles. Some people consider him the best film actor of his generation.

My enjoyment of this film and numerous others leads me to ask the following questions.

Why do so few of my age peers attend current films? How is it that even the presence of stars like the three discussed here does not inspire more of us to go to movie theatres?

A Gallup poll taken last year confirms my suspicion that only a small minority of older people go to the movies any more. Surveying Americans over 65, Gallup found that 57 percent did not attend a single movie in the previous twelve months! By contrast, only 12 percent of those between ages 18 and 29 have not attended a movie in the past year.

It is not hard to suggest some reasons for this phenomenon. The dearth of neighborhood theaters is probably one. Long gone are those like the theater in  Watertown Square universally known by local kids as “The Flea House.” Disabilities can make it even more difficult for many to reach a theater.

Also many elders, I suspect, consider current films as too complicated, not simple like the films of old. My resident 21-year-old often rags me about my failing to understand certain films that speak to her. And, yes, too much sex and violence for their own sake mar many Hollywood flicks.

But, again, the chance to see such performers as my age peer Marlon Brando, along with veteran actor Robert De Niro, and the up-and-coming Edward Norton, makes me want to be at the movies.

Richard Griffin

Summertime finds Phileas J. Fogg, our veteran indoor cat, unusually  lethargic. The heat lies heavy on a creature already wearing a fur coat. Phil looks as if he needs a cold shower but the closest remedy he finds comes from stretching flat out on the floor in hopes of finding subtle air currents close to the ground.

If only we could train this longtime familiar to seek other relief, perhaps in the form of the daily swim that is my own response to heat. However, idealist that I am, even I have given up hope of training Phil to do much of anything. Having failed to teach him to speak French, among other things, I now have accepted my severe limitations as a cat trainer.

For this pessimistic surrender, I have excellent authority to back me up. The New York Times for July 20th carried a fascinating obituary of Gunther Gebel-Williams, the most celebrated animal trainer in the world, who died after a long career with the Ringling Brothers circus.

The obit writer, after reviewing Gebel-Williams’s exploits with lions, tigers, leopards and other wild animals, mentioned a limitation that even this master of the ring labored under:

“After more than five decades in training and performing with all sorts of animals, Mr. Gebel-Williams concluded that there was just one animal that might be close to impossible to train: the house cat.

‘They do as they please,’ he said.”

How true this statement is, the millions of Americans who live with domestic cats have abundant reasons to know. It is indeed sobering to think that the famous trainer could cope with the challenges of the great beasts but was defeated by the likes of Phileas J. Fogg.

Yes, Phil does as he pleases. He stubbornly refuses to take direction from his housemates even when we assure him of our good will. Like an immature human being, he would rather do it his way than to be right.

But this is not to say that Phil’s habits are entirely fixed. Of late, I have noticed him doing something that he would never have done in his youth. He now will rub up against the legs of family members as if in token of affection. It’s still hard to think of him feeling any affection for us; we are always prepared for him to bite or scratch us instead.

However, there can be no other explanation of this new rubbing against, except at those times when Phil’s food bowl registers empty. Otherwise, this physical contact must be a sign that he cares something about us. Perhaps the approach of old age has taught him that we humans are more than mere providers. Phil is recognizing that we too need love and affection and he has determined to give them to us.

For fear this seem an unjustified leap of faith, what other interpretation can one reasonably attach to the leg rubbing?

Does it give Phil body heat? But in summertime, he surely does not want to be any hotter than he is. Does it reassure Phil that he exists? But he has always shown a strength of character that precludes existential doubts. Granted, we sometimes think that Phil would profit from a few visits to a cat shrink, but not because he harbors doubts about who he is.

Phil has occasionally allowed himself to back off from a stand based on principle. That has happened when he has agreed to eat food that has been in his bowl for a while rather than continue to demand that we put out stuff fresh from the canister.

Backing down like this, however, may indicate that, with age, Phil has found a new flexibility. When younger, he might have refused compromise but now he has attained a willingness to reach an accommodation with us. Seeing him yield encourages me to think that his last years will make him even more companionable.

Another instance of Phil’s new flexibility comes to light when we allow him to make a cameo appearance before guests. When friends visit, our practice has been to bring him up from his cellar lair and carry him in to greet the visitors.

On these occasions he is almost always on his best behavior, especially when children are in the house. Despite his relative seniority, Phil recognizes a certain kinship with the kids and he determines not to take advantage of their vulnerability. So he allows them to stroke him with impunity. They need not fear that he will spring to the attack as he might with older humans.

So the record is mixed. Gunther Gebel-Williams was certainly right about the untrainability of household cats. But, had he known our Phil, he would have recognized in this beast a creature with more flexibility than his sweeping statement would seem to allow.

Richard Griffin

Ascribe it to my age, if you will, but I am becoming a fancier of obituaries. The newspaper pages that carry them do not rival my addiction to those pages devoted to sports, not yet at least. But I confess loving to read accounts of people’s lives seen from the vantage point of their deaths.

This pleasure, of course, increases when the obituary is written by a master of the genre. The writer who can combine incisive appreciation of the person’s distinctive traits with the well-turned phrase delights me. Anyone who can bring out the departed’s uniqueness, appreciate the person’s gifts while not omitting relevant faults, and treat readers to fine prose makes me happy.

You may be relieved to hear, however, that my obit love does not approach my maternal grandmother’s. As a young boy visiting her house in Peabody, MA, I would be sent downstairs to pick up her Salem Evening News. The first question she would ask me when I returned was “Who’s dead?” Then she would open to her favorite page and read about local friends and acquaintances who had passed on.

In recent weeks an obituary that I discovered in the Tablet, which calls itself an international Catholic weekly and comes out of London, provided me with warm delight. It dealt with the life of Herbert McCabe, a priest who belonged to the Dominican Order, and served as theologian, writer, and editor. Having had some association with him in the1960s added to my relish while reading his obit.

My bias is that the English write better obits than we, their former colonists, do. Or, if not, they have better material to work with. That’s because of the proud tradition of eccentricity that the Brits have maintained for so long a time. Surely they produce more characters per capita than we Americans can ever hope to do. And members of the clergy may number more of them than those of other professions.

Herbert McCabe belonged to that great tradition, as his obituary brings out. Written by Cambridge University historian Eamon Duffy, this obit in fact calls McCabe one of the British Catholic Church’s “most gargantuan characters” and then goes on to show why.

Early on, Duffy gives the flavor of the man: “To the end of his life his personal appearance with his wild shock of hair and his ancient and rarely washed sweaters, remained redolent, in more senses than one, of the student chaplaincies of the Sixties.”

Not glossing over McCabe’s faults, the obituarist says: “He was never an easy man to live with, relentlessly tenacious in argument and, especially as the evening waned and the level in the bottle dropped, sometimes cruelly scathing to those he judged guilty of woolly thought or moral evasion.”

You would not expect a man like this to rely on conventional transportation and he did not. “McCabe roared into his friends’ lives on a beaten-up motor-bike, booted and duffel-coated and ready to talk till the pubs closed, and preferably later if anyone had a bottle in their bag.”

For fear these quotes make McCabe seem merely an eccentric or even a drunk, the writer recognizes in him marvelous abilities and fierce loyalty to friends. Yet he was also what Duffy calls “essentially lonely” and often unsure of himself.  

Toward the end, the writer of this obit speaks of a fall that left McCabe enfeebled. Of his response, Duffy says “he endured this affliction with an endearing gentleness which amazed those who had known only the theological gladiator of his prime.”

Summing up with a broad sweep, Duffy finally says of his subject: “He was a rare and lovely man. God rest his mighty soul.”

This obit strikes me as a work of art. In a few hundred words the writer has given us another human being, full of achievement yet plagued by problems and personal insecurity. The writer shows rich appreciation of his colleague but also shows us that he was merely human.

This kind of obit serves as a mini-biography until someone decides to write a full one. Like skilled biographers, Eamon Duffy has the virtue of refusing to oversimplify the life of a man perhaps even more complicated than the rest of us. Without being judgmental, he brings out his subject’s contradictions, inconsistencies that mark every human life.

Growing older has given me more sympathy toward other people both living and dead. For the dead, if they have the good fortune to receive a skilled obit, it becomes easier perhaps to appreciate a person against the backdrop of their whole life course. “Nothing became him in life like the leaving of it,” words spoken about the Thane of Cawdor in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, sometimes apply to others. The ending of a life in itself can commend the person to us most, as it did for me with my friend, Herbert McCabe.

Richard Griffin

Rarely does a book make me laugh out loud. But “Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There” did. It also seduced me into that often unwelcome practice of reading parts at other people.

The author, David Brooks, is one of the cleverest journalists in captivity. He brings to his writing a sharp eye for social detail and an ability to generalize provocatively.

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