My friend William Watson recently decided to watch whatever is left of Steven Spielberg’s filmography and possibly write an article on his personal rankings over on Gabbing Geek. Personally, I can’t wait to see it. I think Spielberg is his favorite director. At the very least, he has said Spielberg is the greatest of all time. That’s a good choice, but when I think of my personal preferences, my favorite living director is Martin Scorsese. Maybe I should do something like that. I have been filling in my Scorsese gaps over the past year. At this point, I think the only ones left are the more obscure ones.
That’s mostly because I finally got around to Scorsese’s adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, a movie Scorsese once said was one of the most violent movies he’d ever made. Considering some of the movies on his filmography, that is a really bold statement. But is it true?
Upperclass New Yorker Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) just got engaged to the young and innocent May Welland (Winona Ryder), but a chance encounter with her cousin, Countess Elena Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer), sets his heart aflutter in unexpected ways. Elena is divorced after a nasty marriage to a Polish nobleman, but her social status is tenuous at best. Newland finds himself stuck between societal expectations by staying with May or possibly going for something passionate with Elena. Can he work past what is expected of him and just do something to make himself happy?
It’s those societal forces that prompted Scorsese to say this was his most violent movie. There’s no blood, no sex, and I don’t think there’s even any swearing. That fits with my personal experience with Edith Wharton’s work. I’ve read two of her novels: this one and Ethan Frome, and both are about a man looking for a passionate love with another woman but never doing much more than talking to her. The romantic and sexual tensions might fry the metaphorical egg, but no one is going to be doing much more than maybe touch a foot or come in for a fairly chaste kiss. Violence, here, is more about trauma, and all of that here is mental and social. The body can heal, given time and proper treatment, but the mind? That might be even deeper.
It helps immensely that Day-Lewis and Pfeiffer have great chemistry. It’s easy to see why they might be tempted with each other. Ryder comes across as a weaker character by comparison, but she looks younger and more innocent. There’s a good reason for that since she is more than a decade younger than her two co-stars, but upon reflection, it actually helps make the movie’s final revelations about May stick better. Without saying what it is, there’s more to May than meets the eye, and Ryder’s less impactful performance actually helps that along.
Side note: if I remember correctly from the novel I read 20+ years ago, the novel’s version of the two women said May was blonde to the dark-haired Elena. Clearly the opposite was done here.
There is one small flaw to the movie, and that actually comes from a voiceover. Actress Joanne Woodward is actually reading verbatim whole sections of the novel at various points. That’s unnecessary. While it would take a filmmaker of great skill and subtly to get Wharton’s themes and ideas down. Scorsese actually demonstrates he has that skill in many scenes here. I just would have preferred he trusted himself more and used the narrator less if at all.
Grade: A-
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