The Time of Their Lives is a film about life and what it is to be old and human in the presence of approaching death. It focuses on the experience of a time of life when the very notion of time becomes abstracted and difficult to comprehend. This deeply subjective, timeless quality is reflected in the structure of the film itself – the timeframe remains indefinable despite referencing memory, expectation, hope and loss.

Although intellectually as sharp as ever, Hetty, Rose and Alison each rely heavily on hearing aids and are registered either blind or partially-sighted so their relationship with their immediate environment is always mediated by hearing aids and visual devices. Particular framing and carefully sourced and treated sound are crucial in bringing us closer to their sensory perceptions of this world and to the minutiae of the intensely subjective everyday experiences of it. But the film also conveys a sense of the many parallel lives and activities which make up life at the Mary Feilding Guild, the residential home for the active elderly where Hetty, Rose and Alison live. It is a building of many interconnecting spaces enabling us, as audience, to ‘drop in’ on phone calls, conversations, concerts, keep fit classes etc. whilst quietly observing a T’ai Chi class at the bottom of the garden or watching a resident make their way slowly down to supper.

For these residents, life has not reduced to purely personal concerns, it continues to expand, taking in pressing global issues of the day such as terrorism and the war in Iraq. And yet their palpable awareness of the imminence of their own death underpins everything, occupying a space into which we are invited - to stop and listen. It is through this continual engagement with the present that we come to understand how they think and feel about being alive in the world today.

In its evocation of old age, the film is also, therefore, about life in a wider context: – human relationships, the negotiation of personal difference, understanding of history, faith and belief – making it relevant regardless of age or cultural background. The energy and passion of their forcefully expressed views (on politics, fundamentalism, sex, global warming, old peoples’ homes, terrorism and communism, to name but a few) are so powerful that it’s easy to forget these people have lived for more than a century. Close your eyes and it’s not old faces you see but young minds you hear and I believe passionately that our society’s understanding and perception of old age can only be challenged by thoughtful, intelligent argument, presented in an engaging and entertaining way. Patronising sentimentality and bleak resignation have no place in The Time of Their Lives. Its compelling characters bring to the screen a rare perspective on old age – positive, life-affirming, yet essentially documentary - a perspective that will surprise, entertain and provoke.