By Ann Hornaday
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 4, 2005; Page C05
Writer-director Elliot Greenebaum makes an ambitious, if uneven, debut with "Assisted Living," a documentary-drama that melds genres much in the same way as last year's "Story of the Weeping Camel." This quiet, often meditative film is filled with observant, graceful touches that suggest the assured hand of a veteran filmmaker; indeed it's only Greenebaum's choice and characterization of a protagonist -- a pot-smoking slacker named Todd -- that reminds viewers that the director was, after all, only 22 years old when he made the film.
Set in a real-life nursing home in Kentucky, and featuring a supporting cast of that facility's actual clientele, "Assisted Living" follows Todd (Michael Bonsignore) during his last day of work as a janitor there. He's late, as usual, and starts his day -- again, as usual -- with several pipe-bowls of marijuana, a crutch he resorts to often, presumably as a defense against the loneliness and sense of impending death that suffuses his place of work.
Intercutting between long, contemplative close-ups of hands gnarled from arthritis and the rictus of stroke patients whose dentures have been removed, Greenebaum tells the fictional story of how Todd's irreverent antics escalate (he routinely uses an internal phone to call the residents, pretending to be long-dead relatives waiting for them in heaven), and how his budding friendship with one early Alzheimer's patient named Mrs. Pearlman (Maggie Riley) finally brings his tenuous tenure to an end. In the course of Todd's bleary-eyed interactions with his co-workers, we see that he's not the only one mentally checking out; the home's administrator (Clint Vaught) has a bottle of bourbon in his desk and his immediate superior, a nurse named Nancy Jo (Nancy Jo Boone), often seems more interested in her 3-year-old daughter than her needy charges.
Greenebaum's characterization of Mrs. Pearlman leaves no doubt that his intention with "Assisted Living" was to portray aging with dignity and compassion; as played by the vibrant, feisty Riley, she is a still-attractive woman, by turns spaced out and sharply aware of her condition. But in choosing such a removed and mean-spirited loser like Todd to guide us through her world, the filmmaker too often makes the experience of aging -- or, more specifically, the efforts of therapists, clergy and caregivers to imbue it with some kind of hope -- look ridiculous. It's easy to make bingo games, TV rooms, chapel services and singalongs look like grim exercises in false cheer, but they're all cheap shots, as is making a joke of the home's resident golden retriever, a beloved pet that Todd manages to lose in his self-involved daze.
For a first-time effort, the micro-budgeted "Assisted Living" is an audacious exercise, not only in combining fiction and nonfiction techniques, but Greenebaum's bold attempts at shifting tone between drama and mordant comedy. If the latter too often results in ironic distance rather than clarity and insight, that's surely more a measure of the filmmaker's youth than bad faith.
Assisted Living (77 minutes, at Landmark's E Street Cinema) is not rated. It contains some drug use.
