Word: ponding
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...season, On Golden Pond would be welcome. Like last year's Ordinary People, the film addresses itself seriously and intelligently, without sermon or sociology, to an inescapable human issue: in this case, finding a decent ending for a life. By inviting audiences to contemplate the struggle of two attractively idiosyncratic old parties coming to terms with mortality, On Golden Pond gently requires them to confront that same inevitability in themselves. In short, those serene images of the film's opening are deceptive; age is not entirely golden on Golden Pond; dark currents flow just beneath its surface...
...apparent that they have been spared none of the vicissitudes of aging except poverty. He is a retired professor, and there is obviously good breeding and a bit of money in their backgrounds. But the isolation of old age is upon them. No close friends are left on the pond; their only child Chelsea has been estranged from her father since childhood and now almost never comes home. Divorced, childless, she is living the worrisome ad hoc life of the fortyish woman who is still trying to find herself. The promise of a visit from her before the summer ends...
...psychology may be taken a little too straight out of Erik Erikson, or even Gail Sheehy, and the plot verges on the melodramatic (it takes a boating accident to seal the bargain of friendship between the generations). But emotionally On Golden Pond is no less valid for being something of a cliche. Anyway, the characters are so strong that the piece does not play as a cliché. Hepburn, for example may have a less chewy part than has Fonda, but the briskness of her manner, her well-justified image as a no-nonsense individualist who is nevertheless a good...
...Golden Pond finally belongs to Henry Fonda, who has had to wait until the end of his life for the part of his life. As Norman he is able to bring together, in a single character, the two main strands of his talent. The old gentleman's character is grounded on the main line of Fonda's star career. The fundamental decency and intelligence that were basic to the likes of Tom load and Mr. Roberts still infuse his presence...
With all their visitors departed, the last bags and boxes stowed in the station wagon, Norman and Ethel go down to the pond to say goodbye to the loons that have been their summer companions. The bird family turns out to be diminished too-just the mother and father are left. Fonda eyes them and in the wry, dry voice that has drawled through our consciousness for almost half a century, speaks a kind of generational epitaph, weary but accepting. "Babies are all grown up . . . and moved to Los Angeles or somewhere...