The Gerontologist
cite as: Gerontologist, 2016, Vol. 56, No. 3, 592–593
doi:10.1093/geront/gnw062
Advance Access publication April 15, 2016
On Film and Digital Media
Playing With Ageism
Jim Vanden Bosch, MA*
Terra Nova Films, Chicago, Illinois.
*Address correspondence to Jim Vanden Bosch, MA, Terra Nova Films, Chicago, IL 60643. E-mail: [email protected]
Film: The Intern (121 minutes)
Warner Brothers Pictures, Distributor
Produced and Directed by Nancy Meyers
Released: September 2015 (USA)
Not often does a film as entertainingly watchable as The
Intern carry within it a positive regard for the multigenerational nature of human life in the 21st century. Generational
chasms may still exist in big sectors of our culture, but films
like The Intern may help reduce their size. Not that The
Intern is a didactic “message” film; far from it. It is light on
its feet and simply fun to watch as it unfolds the story of a
successful but harried young executive learning to accept,
and then trust, the help of an older worker.
The older worker in this case is actually a new intern,
recently hired under a “senior intern” program at a fastgrowing e-commerce company. When the intern, 70-yearold Ben Whittaker (Robert De Niro), comes to work the
first day, he finds a workplace comprised of mostly younger
workers running on high octane as they try to keep up with
the company’s rapid growth. He has been assigned as a
personal intern to the company’s founder and CEO, Jules
Ostin (Anne Hathaway), who has been persuaded, against
her wishes, to try the new senior intern program. Initially
she sets Ben aside, assuming that he is out of place and
not up to the fast paced work environment. Ben, however,
calmly finds ways to help others, and soon becomes a valued part of the workplace. But it isn’t until he becomes,
by happenstance, Jules’ driver that she begins to notice the
stability of his character. Although initially suspicious of
his acutely observant nature, she eventually comes to rely
on his constant availability and calm presence as she deals
with the daily stress of her hands-on management style.
Part of the intrigue of this film is how it plays with
the common notions of internship, mentoring, and
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The Gerontologist, 2016, Vol. 56, No. 3
generational interaction. Usually it is the elders who are in
the mentoring role and youth who are interning. The roles
in The Intern are seemingly reversed. Even though the
company’s stated rationale for instituting the senior intern
program is to “have an intern with a lifetime of experience”, there are some lingering misperceptions about
older adults that CEO Jules and many of the younger
staff still carry—perceptions that are reinforced when Ben
brings to work his “old school” dress code, attaché case,
and manners.
The film has fun playing with these stereotypical differences and also nudges its way into some deeper underlying
assumptions about older adults’ inability to learn and work
within the new technology of the business world. As it plays
with these stereotypes, the film soon reveals that Ben will
not be living up to these misperceptions. Instead, he brings
an openness to learning and an easy adaptation to the fluid
and tech-driven work style of the company. The film then
takes this a step further. Ben soon becomes regarded as
a mentor—on everything from personal relationships to
business strategies. And on a deeper level, his stability of
character and his lifetime of experience enable him to gently and unobtrusively “mentor” Jules as she struggles with
a major decision—whether to listen to the wishes of her
investors to bring in an outside CEO to manage her fastgrowing company and thereby risk losing her control of
how the company runs.
Another part of the storyline in The Intern revolves
around the pressures Jules faces as a working mother running a demanding business. Jules’ husband, we learn, put
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his own career on hold to become a stay-at-home dad when
the company Jules started took off. The tensions that are
introduced in the film as a result of this purport to go deep
but are resolved rather quickly by the film’s end—thanks in
part to Ben’s sage advice to Jules.
A large part of what makes this film work so well is the
chemistry between its two main characters—De Niro and
Hathaway. Although their interactions with each other
evolve as the film progresses, the pacing and tone of the dialogue between them are always expertly nuanced and often
accompanied with expressive facial gestures that complete
the essence of their interaction. The overall pace of the film
makes it enjoyable to watch, sprinting where needed, but
mostly just briskly moving along. And although the film
is imbued with a humorous tone, the humor is rarely over
played. One of the funnier scenes in the film comes about
halfway in, when Ben masterminds a plan to undo an inappropriate e-mail Jules has inadvertently sent to the wrong
person (her mother). The caper is over in just a few minutes,
but it brings some well-timed hilarity to the film’s storyline.
If there is any flaw in this film, it is that it may be too
obvious and fluffy in the way it spools out its storyline.
There are no surprises, really, in where the film is headed.
It does not ask you to deeply reflect on or puzzle over the
stereotypes it is inherently addressing. It is sometimes also
a little too obvious in how it queues up the dialogue that
shows us a common ageist, or sexist, attitude. That said, it
would be a fun exercise to engage students in a discussion
of how much they think the film addresses their own, or
their peers’, attitudes about older adults.