The Age of Innocence
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Movie Reviews of The Age of Innocence
Movie Review: There aren't enough stars for the most powerful film I've ever seen
Summary: 5 Stars
I firmly believe that this is the greatest film ever made; it is surely the greatest I have ever seen, and over several decades I've seen many. It's one of the most powerful works of art I've experienced in any form.
I can still recall vividly the first time that I saw it. It was at a matinee viewing at a theater in downtown Philadelphia. The audience was me, my then-wife, and about a gazillion sweet little old ladies, median age of about 73. The audience observed stone silence throughout the showing; not a whisper, not a popcorn-rustle. I (and I suspect several other people) left the theater with new appreciation of the emotional power of film.
What makes this film so uniquely powerful is that it so perfectly depicts that most powerful of emotions: love. I tend to be an impatient critic of most romantic films, which I find manipulative and unbelievable. I can't believe in a film romance simply because violins well up when two attractive people look at each other. But this film, unlike any other I know of, vividly documents the experience of falling in love: the way that the mind seizes upon the words and the gestures of one woman alone, finding something unique, intriguing, soul-piercing in them, and filtering out everyone else.
The basic story is that of Newland Archer (Daniel Day Lewis), a young pillar of upper-crust 1870s New York society. He has a non-conformist's mind, but is outwardly respectful of the culture in which he lives. About the time that he becomes engaged to May (Wynona Ryder), there arrives in his world the Countess Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer.) The Countess is fleeing a marriage and maltreatment from Count Olenski, from whom she wants that then-scandalous thing: divorce. The Countess herself is the subject of rumors of improprieties with her husband's secretary.
Thus, as Newland and the Countess find something unique in one another and fall in love, it presents Newland with an agonizing dilemma: is there any honorable way to be with the potential love of his life, given his engagement to May, and Olenska's marriage to the Count? But it would be a crime against art to spoil that mystery for you, so enough said.
One remarkable aspect of this film is that the characters' society not only constrains the conduct of everyone involved, but also the expressions of their feelings. Daniel Day Lewis in particular carries a burden of conveying the most powerful emotions without being able to voice them. He does this in one of the most magnificent performances ever on film, often acting wordlessly through means as subtle as trembling fingers or a clenched jaw.
You are shown quite clearly how he falls in love with the Countess. She gives voice to the irreverent thoughts that never occur to May, and which Newland feels but would never speak. The looks of shocked amusement on Daniel Day Lewis's face in many of these early conversations are a vital part of the gradual, but irresistible, warming of their early relationship.
What unfolds is a story of love, and heartbreak, of choices made, of responsibilities met, and of opportunities missed and gone forever. It's a tale that will affect anyone who ever wonders about the path not taken in their own life. And it's also a tale of the clash between societal norms and individual desires, especially limiting the options of an unlucky woman.
Upon first viewing, the visual genius of the film is very striking. Stills of the film rival the great paintings of art history (and in at least one instance, nearly parodying a famous Seurat.) There's tremendous visual splendor and opulence.
I found that on repeat viewings, however, I was equally amazed by the film's dynamic qualities - the way that one scene draws you into the next, often with the beautiful orchestral score as an ineluctable link between scenes. The sequence in which the yellow roses are ordered and delivered is a gorgeous montage of a few seconds, driven by the backing music.
Oh, and that music - Elmer Bernstein composed one of the most emotive scores ever for a film, and several of the scenes draw their power from it. Though the score is very reminiscent of the third movement of the Brahms third symphony, it may actually exceed the Brahms in several places for emotional power.
It's a film that one watches and repeatedly has the feeling, "This is one of the great scenes in all of film." But those fantastic scenes just keep coming, one after the other. I have particular favorites: the scene where the Countess whispers to Newland in the opera box, the scene where he approaches her as she looks out at the lighthouse, and of course, the incredibly moving final scene.
I don't know what else to say about the final scene other than that watching it for the first time was a more powerful experience than I'd had at the cinema at any time prior.
Strangely, this is one of the lesser-known Scorsese films. I'm a great fan of Scorsese's other works, but he certainly never made a gangster film as great as this. I suspect that this one just didn't find its natural audience. Perhaps people expected it to be a lighter romantic costume drama. Instead it is an intense story of romantic agony, told from the viewpoint of a conflicted male. Perhaps it reflects that male perspective too much to be a chick flick, whereas not enough men were interested in watching this story. Perhaps it was just too subtle. Whatever the cause, the lack of appreciation is unfortunate, because it's a story that should have great power for everyone who has ever been deeply and truly in love, especially if that love might slip away forever.
I saw this film repeatedly after it was first released, but several years had passed before I saw it again this past weekend with my wife. It's like Daniel Day Lewis says to Michelle Pfeiffer late in the film: "Every time I see you, you happen to me all over again." And so it is with this masterpiece.
Movie Review: Innocence, shminnocence
Summary: 5 Stars
I tried watching this on a hot evening and it put me right to sleep. When I woke up, I started over and this time it held my interest until the very end. It reminded me a lot of Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette in that it was a period drama with lavish costumes, lavish banquets, ballroom dancing, and scenes in the opera; in this case it opens as the 1870 New York audience is enjoying a performance of Charles Gounod's "Faust." Faust made a bargain with the devil, but these people are in The Age of Innocence, so no such bargains are in effect, though perhaps everyone isn't as innocent as they seem. The problem with films like this is that not much happens, and the opulent lifestyle soon grows boring.
Also, while mostly it is better to show instead of tell, it is too difficult to navigate the customs of these strange people, and the director, Martin Scorsese, relies on a narrator, Joanne Woodward, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Eve, a woman suffering from multiple personality disorder in "The Three Faces of Eve." Interestingly, she was also the narrator for a film made in 1959 of William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" where she was the voice of Quentin, a male character. In this film based on the novel by Edith Wharton, Woodward is no doubt providing the authorial voice of Wharton.
There is a love triangle with Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis), Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer), and May Welland (Winona Ryder). Newland marries May, but his heart really belongs to Ellen. She is married to a Count and has come over the Atlantic to stay with relatives in New York. She cares little for their quaint customs and is in danger of being ostracized but Newland intervenes. Ellen is May's cousin, and on the surface May seems to encourage Newland to help her cousin, but soon May, and the whole of New York society, seems to suspect that Newland and Ellen are having an affair. The love triangle reminded me of Daniel Day-Lewis in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" where he loves one woman but feels a strong connection with another who understands him on a deeper level. The derby? Anyone? All three give strong performances, with Winona holding back a lot, seeming to be kind of vapid, but actually understanding and enduring more than you realize to hold her marriage and family together. Pfeiffer stands out the most, and Daniel holds it together, but what is up with those hats? Actually, he wears a pretty cool hat that was probably the height of fashion back in 1870, kind of a cross between a fedora and something a viceroy would wear in a Rembrandt painting.
Ellen Olenska: Is fashion such a serious consideration?
Newland Archer: Among those who have nothing more serious to consider.
Speaking of paintings, there are a lot of great ones in the set design. The whole opulent society feel is fabulous, and there is also great classical music by Beethoven, Johann Strauss I and II, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, as well as an original score composed by the great Elmer Bernstein. The Age of Innocence is a class act all the way, really uncharacteristic of director Martin Scorsese, but obviously a film that was for him very heartfelt. He dedicated it to his father, just as Oliver Stone dedicated Wall Street to his father. It is kind of slow moving, but give yourself up to this reverie of those halcyon days of 1870, and you'll enjoy The Age of Innocence.
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Ellen Olenska: I think we should look at reality, not dreams.
Newland Archer: I just want us to be together!
Ellen Olenska: I can't be your wife, Newland! Is it your idea that I should live with you as your mistress?
Newland Archer: I want... Somehow, I want to get away with you... and... and find a world where words like that don't exist!
Gangs of New York (2002) Directed by Martin Scorsese, Daniel Day-Lewis was Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting
The Crucible (1996) Daniel Day-Lewis was John Proctor, Winona Ryder was Abigail Williams
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) Daniel Day-Lewis was Tomas
The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) Michelle Pfeiffer was Susie Diamond
Into the Night (1985) Michelle Pfeiffer was Diana
Reality Bites (1994) Winona Ryder was Lelaina Pierce
Bram Stoker's Dracula (Collector's Edition) (1992) Winona Ryder was Mina Murray / Elisabeta, Richard E. Grant was Dr. Jack Seward
How to Make an American Quilt (Ws) (1995) Winona Ryder was Finn Dodd
Chaplin (1992) Geraldine Chaplin was Hannah Chaplin
Swing Kids (1993) Robert Sean Leonard was Peter Müller
Movie Review: Floral and Lace-Like Exquisiteness
Summary: 5 Stars
Having read Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, I have observed that Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder should have had opposite roles, as they would have then better fit the descriptions of their respective characters, Ellen Olenska and May Welland. However, the acting of both was superb, as was that of Daniel Day-Lewis as society lawyer, Newland Archer, and the rest of the cast.
Our setting is that of New York Society in the 1870s. We begin with a night at the opera, and with Joanne Woodward's appropriately genteel narration, we become acquainted with this rareified world--the veneer of which could be ruffled by the slightest hint of scandal. Students of the Victorian age may admire the meticulous attention paid to the details of dress, jewels, meals, etiquette, accessories, architecture, paintings, gifts given on appropriate occassions, social mores, the symbolism of flowers presented to ladies, etc.
Camera lenses pan across opera boxes, ballrooms, dining room tables, enchanting gardens, and a wealth of art on museums and household walls.
Amid the mildly expressed indignation of Sillerton Jackson and Larry Lefferts(Alec McCowen and Richard E. Grant),the societal experts on family histories and on form, Countess Ellen Olenska, May's European-raised cousin, who is something of a persona non grata among New York Society because she is separated from her husband, joins the newly engaged May and her mother (Geraldine Chaplain) in their opera box, and are later joined by Newland, May's fiance.The characters of the two female leads are well represented by Gabriella Pescucci's costumes--Ellen's sharp sweetheart-necklined royal blue satin, and May's pallid tulle-laden gown which makes the latter look ethereal, seem to represent experience and innocence. Ellen spends much time clad in rich jewel tones.
At the moment Newland greets her in the box, the Countess, whispering delicately about her earlier acquaintance with those present, gracefully sweeps her fan over the audience beneath her to illustrate the point she is making.
At the annual ball given my Mr. and Mrs. Julius Beaufort(Stuart Wilson and Mary Beth Hurt), May shows off her engagement ring, and chats pleasantly with her fiance.
May's grandmother, Mrs. Manson Mingott(Miriam Margoyles), is delighted by the engagement, and wants to give the wedding breakfast. As the story progresses, the obese couch-ridden matriarch will act as an adviser on the marital dilemmas of her kinfolk, sometimes to her own distress.
As his own wedding day approaches, Archer discusses Ellen's situation with law firm partner Mr. Letterblain(Norman Lloyd), and tries to beg off taking her case.
Newland and May marry, honeymoon in Europe, and still find Ellen's issues awaiting them upon their return. Newland is torn between his attraction to the unconventional Countess, whose disregard for a few societal customs, such as wearing red at formal gatherings, leaving one gentleman's company to talk to another at such gatherings, and her private habit of smoking when that was unacceptable behavior for women--and the more conventional, sweet and docile May, whom he fears has no real depth.
He will learn much later how false this impression really is.
Manning this opulent Oscar-nominated effort is Martin Scorsese, who cameos as a wedding photographer, and gives bit parts to various members of his family, including his daughter, Domenica, whose Katie Blenker's mindless chatter with Newland reveals her to be a young lady typical of her time and social standing. Sian Phillips and Carolyn Farina portray Newland's dependant mother and sister, Jonathan Pryce is the Frenchman Riviere, Michael Gough and Alexis Smith play the King and Queen of New York Society, Henry and Louisa Van der Luyden, and Robert Sean Leonard plays the Archer's son.
Michael Baullhaus' cinematography is soft, natural, and glowing, and we are ultimately presented with a look into a bygone era of annual rituals of formality, subtle assaults on the psyches of those wishing to break free from them, and amid the unseen inner turmoil of some, a poignant underestimation of one woman's understanding of her husband's private, unexpressed anguish.
Movie Review: Manners, Morals, Modesty, Mores---& Misery.
Summary: 5 Stars
Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Edith Wharton's exquisite tragedy of manners "The Age of Innocence" is a lush, meticulously staged, heartbreakingly gorgeous but hideously painful experience to watch: it is a tale of two young people, lured away from societal restraint and social decency by Passion, ensaring themselves in a Death Trap, one that will claim their lives, reputations, and souls. Watching "The Age of Innocence" is like watching some glorious rare bird, entrapped in a gilded, gem-studded cage, fight its way to freedom---even though the bars of the cage bristle with diamond shards and daggers. We know the bird is doomed; we know the wages of Passion is Death. We watch anyway, transfixed.
Published in the 1920's, Edith Wharton's "Age of Innocence" was a scrupulous study of a society that had already been obliterated by a rapidly changing, far less 'innocent' continental Republic. In the novel and the movie, we are ensconced in unspoken yet binding social contrivances of New York of the 1870's, and quickly introduced to a bizarre menage a trois of striking characters: Newland Archer (played to the nuanced, agonized hilt by Daniel Day Lewis), a young and bold attorney, comfortably settled in New York society yet not a leading light; May Welland (played all sweetness and light---and cunning---by an effective Winona Ryder), born into a solid family, a blithe spirit projecting innocence, and Newland's fiancee; and the Countess Ellen Olenska (played by Michelle Pfeifer, in a role tailor-made for her), May's cousin, a New Yorker ensnared in a marriage of convenience to a disreputable European count of dissolute habits and degenerate nature.
Archer, initially suspicious and disapproving of the unconvential and slightly disreputable Countess Olenska, succumbs quickly to her charms and is smitten; passion unfolds; disaster, precictably, follows.
This intricately crafted, meticulously guilded Age of Innocence is made innocent, of course, by its merciless social strictures, its severe, sere social codes. Scorsese introduces us to this beautiful, fragile, wickedly punishing bell jar of social mores and etiquette, delves deep into its evanescent detail, its galleries of paintings and tapestries, its sitting rooms of studied gentlemen cutting and lighthing their cigars, its panoply of dinner plates and intricately crafted repasts.
"The Age of Innocence" follows the excruciatingly painful, totally surreptious battle waged between Olenska and her would-be lover Newland Archer versus Decent Society. Scorsese has a deft, steady hand here: the visions of 1870's New York high society are so clear, so rich, so lush, so vibrant that they bring tears to your eyes; kudos should go to Scorcese's faithful German cinematographer Michael Ballhaus ("Goodfellas", "Gangs of New York"), who also produced the riveting lushness of Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula"---small wonder "Age of Innocence" resembles 'Dracula' in atmosphere, richness, and ambience.
But whereas Coppola's bloodsuckers drank the blood of their unwitting prey, Scorsese's vampires feast on the reputation and integrity of their fallen victims. This is a meticulously balanced society in which social regard and worth is measured in thank-you notes and milliseconds; it is an artificial construct, perfectly presented by Scorsese, which is as unbearably, unworkably fragile as it is judgmental.
The acting here is uniformly solid: Daniel Day-Lewis is note-perfect as the conflicted Archer, Pfeifer woefully diplomatic as the frustrated Olenska, Ryder confident in her role as a latter-day Machiavelli on the Hudson, all smiles and naive charm. Backing up the leads is a veritable host of veteran actors, including Richard Grant as the sneering Larry Lefferts, Miriam Margolyes as a shrewd but effusive Mrs. Mingott, the impeccable Stuart Wilson as the mustachio-twirling "villain" Julius Beaufort (an engine of destruction for this 'age of innocence'), and a besieged Mary Beth Hurt as Beaufort's long-suffering wife.
As painful as first love, as acute as the death of a beloved friend, "The Age of Innocence" is a breathtaking, living, breathing work of art. But the casual viewer, unarmed for its force, should beware: here be Dragons.
Movie Review: Hoped for a better DVD, though
Summary: 5 Stars
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE is perhaps the finest piece of filmmaking from director Martin Scorsese. The close attention to details and subtle nuances, the bold, yet sophisticated use of camera movements (the first twenty minutes of the film, at the opera then at the ball is an authentic technical tour-de-force), the precision of camera setups and editing, and the way he incorporates that to reveal the inner, hidden emotion of his protagonists, all that signifies how this master of our contemporary cinema knows his medium, and what he can do with cinema. For instance, just watch the sequence when Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) waits the Countess Olenska at her house, watching the paintings on the wall, the ornaments of that drawing room. Through what he sees and what we touches, with some extremely intelligent use of dissolves and cuts, Scorsese shows who the Countess is and at the same time boldly penetrates into the inner psyche of Archer; what he thinks and what he expects in her, what kind of person he thinks she is and he expects her to be. Then we hear the sound of a carriage arriving, as the camera cuts to a long, full shot of the room as seen through the door from the hall way; visually getting out of his inner mind, and observe him with a distance.
To those who thought Scorsese was just a specialist of gangster movies and violent dramas might have been surprised when he made an adaptation of this novel, a romantic story of unconsumed love set in the late 19th century New York, and would be even more so to know that it was the filmmaker's own choice, his cherished project to adapt this story. But too those who really know Scorsese's works, there's no surprise. Scorsese was always interested more in the inner emotions and inner conflicts of human beings. He is a filmmaker who is constantly interested in, even obsessed with, human conscience, and how that expresses itself in a peculiar social context. To him the visual violence was in a way a tool to express those inner conflicts of his characters; for instance, for Jake La Motta in RAIGING BULL, the fights were always against himself, being beaten was more of a self-punishment than loosing a fight.
Here, Scorsese presents us a drama where there is no apparent physical violence. But in a way, THE AGE OF INNOCENCE is the most emotionally violent him he has ever made. The social conventions of the time, constituted of subtle, arbitrary signs, express the hostility of that tribal society which is stronger because you never actually sees it, but nevertheless understand it.
It is a wonderful thing that the film is now finally on DVD, so that we can own it in our home and can see it over and over again, to appreciate its details and understand its depth. However, it is a pity that this DVD is a bare-bone one. Mr.Scorsese must be busy preparing his new film GANGS OF NEW YORK, but we could have waited for him to spare some time to provide an audio commentary. And all the richness of visual details that fills this beautiful but hypocritical and cruel universe, a contemporary audience could have profited from an extended visual supplements to know and understand how close it is historically, and how those paintings, clothing, jewelries, and gestures must have meant in the high-society back then. The transfer of the DVD is not that good either. It is still a decent transfer, I guess, but the richness of colors which really shows these people entrapped in all those superficial beauties are not here. Scorsese and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus deliberately avoided the cinematic convention of using an amber overtone to a period piece, and show the colors straight as they are, and that created a strong narrative in itself. Scorsese has even proclaimed that he would have loved to use the Technicolor die-transfer process for this film. Unfortunately, those striking use of colors is not exactly represented in this DVD edition. Maybe we should wait Criterion to produce an extensive, fully-packed DVD. In waiting, it still is worth to own this one.