A simple Google search for “Never too old…” autocompletes with “…to learn”, “… to play” and “… to rock and roll”.
But what about “…to love”?
Out this week is “Hope Springs,” a film that stars Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones as a couple looking to reignite their decades-old marriage with the help of a counselor (Steve Carell). For hopeless romantics, it’s a movie that shows how love exists till old age, throughout old age and even in spite of old age.
In honor of this sentiment, here are nine movies — from “It’s Complicated” to “Bridges of Madison Country” — that show how love spans decades, endures kids, and survives both marriage and divorce.
RELATED: Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep’s Marriage Tips
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‘It’s Complicated’ (2009)
The love between Jane (Meryl Streep) and Jake (Alec Baldwin) is rekindled at their son’s college graduation, despite the two of them being divorced, and Jake being remarried. The film has other trysts and crushes as well, but the romantic hope that divorce doesn’t last forever is rampant throughout the story.
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‘The Notebook’ (2004)
This film, like “Titanic,” is bookended as a story told by an elder, in this instance by an older man in a nursing home reading a story daily to an older woman. This movie ends up being one of the most tear-jerking in recent history, proving that love leaves an indelible mark on those involved, both immediately and peripherally.
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‘Something’s Gotta Give’ (2003)
An almost-senior-citizen (Jack Nicholson) falls for someone closer to his age (Diane Keaton) instead of the younger women that he’s known for pursuing, which seems to say that this relationship will be more about love than lust, and that the man is finally ready for a real relationship in which he has to be vulnerable and open.
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‘When Harry Met Sally’ (1989)
In between the friendship/love dance of Harry and Sally are interstitials that have seated couples of elderly people who have been in love for decades.
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‘Harold & Maude’ (1971)
A movie that questions who’s truly younger: the teenager obsessed with death, or the 79-year-old who knows how to live. As they fall in love and he proposes marriage, we learn that even in small sprints love can be extremely potent.
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‘Letters to Juliet’ (2010)
Though young Sophie, played by Amanda Seyfried, finds true love in the final scenes of the movie, “Letters to Juliet”‘s primary focus is finding Claire’s (Vanessa Redgrave) long lost love Lorenzo. It’s refreshing and romantic to see a movie take the tact of putting the older actor over the starlet, and the rekindling of lost love over the uncertainties and quibbles of a crumbling young relationship.
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‘The Bridges of Madison County’ (1995)
Another instance of the romantic quality of the written word and a love story in letters. The affair shared by Robert Kincaid and Francesca Johnson (played by Eastwood and Streep, respectively) is short, passionate and powerful in duration, but has lasting implications over the rest of both of their lives, serving as a posthumous lesson in love to Francesca’s children, who are in the throws of marital conflict when they find out the truth about their mother.
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‘Grumpy Old Men’ (1993)
Two old men, John (Jack Lemmon) and Max (Walter Matthau), fight over the younger, sexier Ariel (Ann-Margret). This starts as a comedy, and holds that tone throughout, but when Max gives up Ariel to John (even though John had married Max’s high school sweetheart long ago), we see that real love wins out, and that no grudge is worth depriving someone their heart.
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‘Mamma Mia’ (2008)
A daughter (Amanda Seyfried) with three potential dads means a mother (Meryl Streep) who’s lived and loved plenty in her life (and lived to sing the tale of it all). While there is certainly fantasy involved in having three of the most dapper older men working in Hollywood today courting you, it’s charming to see that they all came back to the island in search of the love they all feel they lost out on.
Earlier on Moviefone:
