The ultimate coming-of-age movie

"I want to protest that I’m not allowed to stand outside the House of Commons with a placard about anything that concerns freedom of speech or civil liberties".

This is Hetty Bower, speaking with the same passion about the state of the world as she did when she was 20 - only now she's 102. A life-long Labour Party member and political activist she walks a mile and a half every morning, loves debate almost as much as she does her late husband, drinks plenty of Amontillado and is quite happy to die at any time.

Rose Hacker is 6 months younger than Hetty and is, in her own words, “furious about everything”. For the past year she has written a regular opinion column in the Camden New Journal on issues as diverse as the pitfalls of faith schools, the phenomenon of paedophilia and the misery of binge-drinking teenagers. But in former lives Rose has worked as a sex-therapist, hospital governor, member of the Greater London Council and sculptor.

Alison Selford was writer and TV critic for the Daily Worker for 12 years before being “cured” - as she puts it - of Communism. She’s written 6 historical novels and is now compiling her late-husband’s biography, having recently mastered a PC. Alison has lived at the Mary Feilding Guild for 2 years and “it’s been bliss all the way”.

Set in a residential home for the ‘active elderly’, this film is a portrait of life at the Mary Feilding Guild and of three of its oldest residents. With a combined age of almost 300, Hetty, Rose and Alison continue to be powerfully engaged in their individual brands of activism: Rose has a commitment to speak out for peace on Hiroshima Day; Hetty is preparing for her 84th anti-war march, while Alison is confronting failing health with her usual brand of curiosity and humour. Through the intimate and surprising revelations of these three women, we learn the truth about how very old people experience life and how they deal with the intense challenges – and the indignities - that old age can bring. Public and personal histories are interwoven with private philosophies which stride fearlessly into taboo areas where polite society often fears to tread. Sex, death and faith are spoken of with genuine curiosity and often great wit, rather than a sense of fear, titillation or sentimentality. And through a combination of carefully sourced and treated sound and the use of long-lens work, the film also brings us closer to the sensory experience of these three women, all of whom now rely heavily on hearing aids and are registered either blind or partially sighted.

Along side the collective narrative of a profound change at the Guild – the retirement of the much-loved General Manager, Miriam Isherwood, after 12 years in the job – Hetty, Rose and Alison’s individual stories reveal three friends quietly negotiating the final years of their lives. And through it all the unstoppable energy and vitality of daily life at the Guild is a rhythmic pulse: T’ai Chi on the lawn with Jim, an 87-year-old martial artist, scrabble competitions – in French, visits by Bernard the editor who comes in to type up Rose’s fortnightly column, trips to concerts, the celebrating of landmark birthdays and so on. And then there is the ‘backstage’ world of the Guild – hands-off, responsive and informal - the House-keeping department, the Care team, office staff, caretaker, gardeners etc - whose personalities and relationships are also crucial to the texture of the film.

Surprising, poignant and at times very funny, The Time of Their Lives recognises the rich experience and powerful stories older people have to share as they approach extreme old age and the inevitability of imminent death – people who are so often invisible, marginalised (especially in the media) viewed as victims, patronised or ignored. At the end of lives lived with passion and purpose, these engaging women now face the painful reality of physical, sometimes mental, deterioration and its consequences for their sense of identity and worth. In this singular community, Hetty, Rose, Alison and their friends find the strength to look into the void and speak frankly about death as something to be feared and yet to be welcomed. They are first-hand witnesses who have gone ahead and report back to us from the edge of their own mortality. They can tell us things of which no-one ever speaks.