User Reviews

This stream of consciousness documentary follows three elderly people as they cope with Winter – the fourth and final season – in a large re-purposed industrial complex of buildings, the Bell Telephone Company's laboratories in Manhattan. Old technology, such as vacuum tubes, telephone switching, gramophone records, even transistors were the building's first residents, personified by the current residents, old technology people, who write by hand using pencils. The three are in their seventies, eighties and nineties respectively and the movie shows major events of their lives, such as their deceased partners and career highlights, using flashbacks, pieces to camera, and filmed visits to archives. Some of the close-ups show hair, wrinkles and make-up with confronting detail while some sequences are cloyingly over-sentimental. The sentimentality is offset as the three face the challenge of remaining relevant and reinventing themselves as silicon chip microprocessors, leaving the audience with warm, positive feelings about old age.