Bergman's classic is the protoype for the late life quest. A doctor is to be honored for a life time of service, but dreams that he is more emotionally harmful than helpful. Motivated to understand why, he embarks on a journey into his past and his various human connections. By road's end he has seen his life more clearly and is beginning to turn it around.

An old cowboy embarks on a quest to honor and bury his close Mexican friend and punish the young border guard who has stupidly taken his life out of carelessness and indifference. The journey is funny, macabre,and consistently symbolic as the cowboy sheds all traces of his macho midlife code, and develops a more forgiving and wise one.

Jack Nicholson shows us how not to retire and reinvent ourselves in this parody of a late life quest. Schmidt goes through the motions but is unable to open up and move forward The film's popularity is an indication of just how paralyzed the retiring American male can be when he is left to his own devices.

An aging "son" guitarist, losing his faith in the music and its power, takes off on a road trip to the music's origins and rediscovers all of its powers --to bring people together, to restore them to a sense of life's possibilities and joys, to help them to endure its inevitable sorrows and setbacks, and above all to keep on trucking.

Mrs. Dalloway questions her life and its value on the eve of a party she is preparing for her husband, his associates, and the closest friends of her youth. The day then becomes a search for the momentum and value she fears she has lost. But by party's end she is helped to a new appreciation of her life's value.