Summary:
A young lawyer in high society 1870s New York falls in love with a woman separated from her husband, while he is engaged to the woman’s cousin.
My Thoughts:
“The Age of Innocence” is a marvelous film, but it is not, by any means, the first film I think of when I think “Scorsese”. For the average, well-versed cinephile, I’m sure Scorsese’s name immediately brings to my mind images of violent, profane gangsters in seedy dive bars; that’s where Scorsese got his start, and I’ll be darned if anyone tries to convince me he hasn’t made some of the best gangster films to grace the silver screen. With films like “Goodfellas”, “Taxi Driver”, “Casino”, “Gangs of New York”, and “The Departed” under his belt, it’s pretty easy to forget Scorsese’s oeuvre is incredibly diverse. Sure, he’s made great gangster movies, but he’s also made irreverent comedies (“After Hours”), brilliant biopics (“The Aviator”), children’s adventures (“Hugo”), meditations on spirituality (“Silence”), and atmospheric thrillers (“Shutter Island”). I’d be hard pressed to find a genre Scorsese hasn’t mastered.
I suppose that it should be no surprise that I had seen quite a few of Martin Scorsese’s films before I’d ever even heard mention of this film. “The Age of Innocence” is a quiet masterpiece; it is to Scorsese what “Barry Lyndon” was to Kubrick and what “Tess” was to Polanski. “Lyndon”, “Innocence”, and “Tess” are all masterpieces, but none of those film will ever be the film that their respective directors will be remembered for, but they well could be. “The Age of Innocence” is a film that is dripping with class, beauty, and heartbreak, but it wasn’t until the closing moments of the film that I realized that it truly was a masterpiece.
“You Gave Me My First Glimpse of a Real Life, Then You Asked Me to Go On With a False One. No One Can Endure That.”
Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis, “Phantom Thread”) is a lawyer living in High Society 1870s New York with plans to marry May Welland (Winona Ryder, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”). After a run in with the Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer, “Ant-Man and the Wasp”), Archer finds himself in a position to counsel her during her impending divorce, and the two become fast friends. As Archer’s wedding to May draws nearer, he finds himself torn between the two women, and the whole of New York’s High Society seems to wait anxiously for his decision.
One thing I love about Scorsese’s films is the way in which he slowly crafts worlds around our protagonists. The world in “Innocence” might not be as intense as “Goodfellas”, or as alluring and chaotic as “The Wolf of Wall Street”, but it is just as richly developed. The world of “Innocence” is all about keeping up the outward appearances of one’s class; it’s not so much about being a good person as it is giving the appearance of being an upstanding citizen and being thought of as such a person by one’s peers. The society itself is broken down into tiers, and there are rituals and proper ways of doing things. Those rules are revealed to us through various voiceovers as the camera swoons about parties, dazzling us with shots of china and floral arrangements, beautiful gowns and smart suits. Voiceovers are a tool that Scorsese is quite fond of when it comes to world building, and in this film, the voiceovers seem as if their lifted directly from the source material of Edith Wharton’s novel, and the eloquence of the dialogue helps to give the film as a whole a bit more class. We learn about the pecking order, about what is proper in the eyes of society as a whole, and we also learn how those in high society slight each other; not in the open, but by just simply declining invitations, slowly allowing the other people to work themselves out of the society naturally. The high society in this film is just as cutthroat as the gangsters in “Goodfellas”, only in this film it’s your reputation and your social status on the line, not your life.
SPOILERS FOLLOW
The brilliance of this film is in its subversion of expectations, and here I have to throw up a spoiler tag, because its impossible to talk about what really makes this film great without discussing the ending and how it changes the film as a whole. The majority of this movie is dedicated to Newland and Ellen’s relationship, and their relationship, for at least the first half of the film, is ill defined. Neither party wants to admit their love for one another, because both parties are in positions where that love is impossible to accept. As the film goes on, however, the draw of that love becomes stronger, and Newland’s temptation to betray May becomes stronger still. After dancing round each other for the better part of the film, Newland and Ellen decide to consummate their love, but at the last moment, Ellen returns to Europe, and Newland learns that May is pregnant with his child. The film flashes forward a number of decades and we learn that Newland remained with May until she died of pneumonia. Through a voiceover, we learn that Newland believed that May never knew of his emotional affair with Ellen; we learn that Newland really did learn to love May before she died. Now visiting Europe with his son, Newland learns that his son has intentions to visit Ellen (his son and Ellen were related through May). Newland seems hesitant, having not seen Ellen in more than twenty-five years, and Newland’s son then confides in his father a story he had never recounted before. On May’s deathbed, she confided in her son that she “knew we [Newland’s children] were safe with you [Newland], and always would be. Because once, when she asked you to, you gave up the thing you wanted most.” Newland seems taken aback by this, but he recovers and says that she never asked him to give up anything.
It’s in this scene that the whole of the film is contextualized differently. Though this film revolves around the relationship between Ellen and Newland, it’s really all about the unseen and unexpressed love between Newland and May. Newland spends his whole life feeling as if he has hidden this emotional affair from his wife, but really she knew about it the whole time and loved him enough to let him choose whether or not he would leave her, and in the end, Newland decided to stay with his wife. “Innocence” isn’t, then, about the indiscretion that would have been but never was, it’s instead about the constant, perpetual love of someone who never lost faith in her partner, the quiet love that was always there to support Newland during his greatest moments of doubt.
Verdict:
I really enjoyed this film from the very beginning, but its in the last ten minutes that this movie really becomes miraculous. I think Winona Ryder gives the best, most understated performance of her career in this film; Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer are both wonderful. The production design is gorgeous, and the cinematography is breathtaking. The direction, as always, is practically perfect. And the story this film tells is one that shouldn’t be missed. It should be no surprise to anyone that this film is yet another Scorsese masterpiece.
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