From Her Lips to God’s Ears

It’s the image of Emma twirling and holding her skirts out to the side that keeps coming back to me, even in my dreams since watching Old Immigrant’s Dance. Hers is a girlish move, not a seductress’s, as with Manuela (how does she do that at 69?), and not the little jig of an old woman such as Margarita. Emma’s dance is bittersweet. It is alone, full of longing, and joy. Stop this beautiful short film at any frame and you are likely to find any combination of these three. Anything that feels forced or reenacted is to be forgiven out of gratitude for that difficult-to-achieve moment of transcendence.

Though I am a filmmaker, this film caught me as a woman. At 56, I found myself on the edges of these dances, deeply empathetic to the women as they are portrayed by director Charlene Music’s instincts for the luminous details of truth. Her women are somewhere between possibility and inevitability: one finds new love complete with poetry and a wedding dress and nervous excitement of intimacy; another repeats the bruising cycle of rearing a grandson when her own son dies; and yet another—Emma again—finds fullness even after swapping a teaching job in Guatemala for the honest labor of “starting from zero” in America. In spite of the considerable challenges facing them, and with utmost respect, I find myself envious of their hambre del alma—the hunger of their souls.

Margarita, the knowing one at 98 years of age, has been transformed by time into the likeness of all elderly men and women no matter what class or ethnicity (she reminds me of my father). She dances to her own music of wisdom, freedom, and the personal power of being beyond caring about others’ opinions. In the opening scene, she dances right between the twosome of Manuela and her elderly fiancé with a mischievous look. She knows the dance they are doing. She’s been there. She is moving through it the way old people waltz through the world, in a blissful fog of memory and ownership. Chuckling and winking and proclaiming it good, she asks of God—with Whom she seems to be on close terms—for two more years of life’s aches and pains. They don’t keep her from dancing with a desire for life and more life and more life. “Let’s have some fun because life is short!” Manuela proclaims in the film’s opening dance sequence. From her lips to God’s ears.

Discussion Questions:

1. Which dancer do you most identify with? Emma, Manuela, Margarita?  Why?

2. Why is it important that this story is told by a female filmmaker?

3. How do each of these women wrestle with being “alone, full of longing, and joy?” How do you?

4.  Is there something about approaching the end of their lives that allows these women to enjoy life all the more?

Lauralee Farrer is the president of Burning Heart Productions, and the principal filmmaker of The Fair Trade, Laundry and Tosca, and Not That Funny. Her company is currently shooting Praying the Hours—an ambitious 6-hour narrative project investigating the Abrahamic tradition of the divine hours through storytelling. She is lead storyteller and senior editor at Fuller Seminary and artist in residence for the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology and the Arts.