Introduction

Pre-Viewing Notes and Activities

Summary of Scenes

1. Exterior of a farmhouse in Quebec. We follow the POV of a fly as it meanders toward the house, enters a bedroom window, where an old woman is sleeping, and gets stuck to the fly strip suspended from the ceiling.
2. We hear the radio, and then the old woman narrates her story. “August 23, nine days until my 96 th birthday,”as she rolls out of bed. “It was just a regular day in the life of Louise.” She reaches for her glasses, and we see two photographs of family on her nightstand. (Note: these photographs are not cartoons, but actual photographs.)
3. She goes to her closet. The door has a built-in step-up, and she stands on it to reach for her dress. She goes about her day’s work. She goes to the bathroom, and she notes that today she will have visitors. “So I hurried.” She enters the colorful bathroom and pulls off her scarf. Curlers scatter and fall on the floor. Outside the bathroom, she crosses off “bathroom” on her to-do list. “I had something to do today, so I hurried."
4. She turns on the news radio in the kitchen, and as she walks out of the kitchen we can see some pictures of her grandchildren on her refrigerator. She narrates, “I think I got all my Saturday done today, because I started my Saturday yesterday.” She gets her laundry, picks up some canned apples from the basement storage (and we see a gopher looking in through the basement window), and talks about other chores she has to accomplish today. She steps outside, and then steps up on a stool and hangs out her laundry. A gopher nearby stands over his burrow and looks at her.
5. Then she goes to the pump and begins to pump water into the birdbath—scaring a robin at first because the water comes from an “unexpected source.” Then she goes over to the gopher’s den and sticks the hose down it—and flushes him out with the water. He squirms out of the exit hole and shakes himself dry.
6. Back in the house, she grabs a deck of cards and then puts the deck on the photo album. Suddenly we see inside the album, a picture of the cartoon version of Louise—and that image gives way to a photograph of the real Louise, and then photos of family from 1967 and other years. Photos taken at Easter and Christmas. We hear the voices of real people and their laughter and music. She talks about those days. “And the kids stayed downstairs and played bingo. I remember that, yeah!”
7. Louise plays some solitaire at the table. She grabs a fly and then casts it aside. Then she bags her half-eaten sandwich and drops it into the freezer—along with a fly that happened to fly inside at that moment. “And I rest for a little while.” She sits at the table, closes her eyes, and even the flies settle down. But in a quick few seconds she is up again.
8. She notes that her visitor said she wanted to bowl. “So I cut the grass.” Here she comes in her riding lawnmower. Then cut to more photos from the album of the days when Louise and her family and friends lawn bowled. Suddenly we see the animated Louise drop into the bowling posture outside—but she is hurling a tire toward the gopher hole.
9. Suddenly there is a rainstorm and hail. Inside, Louise measures one of the stones at 7 inches. “The stones were bigger in the old days.” She laughs her laugh. Then she gets a call—her guests cannot come because the husband is ill. She puts her food away, puts away the cards, and says, “At least the grass is cut.”
10. She leaves the bathroom, marks off “bathroom” on her to-do list, and sits in her room and turns on an old reel-to-reel tape recorder playing lovely folk music. She refers to the humpty-dumpty dolls she made for her grandchildren for Christmas. She refers to her big hands—always being busy. She lets one fly go, swats and kills another, and makes a new list. The plans her tomorrow. Outside, the gopher drops into his hole. “I need to take my ugly sleep,” she says. Fast-paced guitar music as we see the credits—actual photographs of Mary Louise Eugenie Hutlet Marginet, 1903-2002. So she lived to the age of 99!

Discussion Questions and Sample Worksheet

Text of The Great Circle of Life: A Resource Guide to Films and Videos on Aging, copyright © 1987, 1999, 2005, Robert E. Yahnke. All photographs copyrighted by Robert E. Yahnke.  All rights reserved.  Contact author for permission to copy photographs or reprint portions of text.

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