Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 23-March-08
Spoiler Rating: High

The Age of Innocence (1993)

"The Age of Innocence" is a frustrating film, but I suppose that is only appropriate. Based on the novel by Edith Wharton, an adept at portraying the horror of thwarted hope, the movie covers the entirety of a love story between two people who are never together. The setting is New York's upper echelon in the early 1870s. At first Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) eagerly awaits his wedding to the much admired May Welland (Winona Ryder). Although he privately questions the stultifying mores of their class, he accepts conformity and views May as the best said class has to offer. The fresh young woman cannot imagine a life other than what she has seen around chandeliered dinner tables and silk-papered drawing rooms, and her faithful ignorance makes her appear unspoiled. In this she differs from Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer), who grew up with Newland and has returned to New York after the scandalous disintegration of her European marriage. The countess has been away from The States too long and does not immediately realize how enslaved to propriety her people are. They grudgingly receive her out of family obligations while vilifying her for indiscretions concocted through hearsay and circulated by rumor. Newland pities her and tries to take her under his wing. In so doing he falls madly in love.

Newland Archer is aptly named: someone aiming for a place beyond his own. (And May Welland? Does she represent the place where everything is fine on the surface, or the place where your soul sinks so deep it drowns without light and air?) In the country of which Newland dreams, he and Ellen can throw off the conventions that label divorce a sin and individuality an aberration. He can revel in the companionship of a woman who expresses her opinions and emotions and inspires him to do the same. He can breathe. He can laugh. He can adore. That would be truly unspoiled.

In all stories where lovers are kept apart by the expectations of society, the modern mind suspects their mettle and devotion. Who cares what others think if you want somebody that much? In this telling, Martin Scorsese succeeds at conveying the weight of such expectations on the unfortunate pair, and also on May, who welcomes the weight like a comforting blanket rather than a crushing steamroller. But the viewer still suffers some frustration. For one, Pfeiffer's pinched pallor and watery eyes are ill suited for expressing blazing passion. In addition, Scorsese's (and his editor's) repeated fragmentation of scenes with queer temporal jumps mars the flow. This is most noticeable when Newland removes Ellen's glove so that he can kiss her hand — the closest he ever comes to undressing her. The scene would have been so much hotter in one contiguous shot (all those buttons!) instead of discrete seconds fitted together to form a moment. Often the movie, like its subjects, feels shallow and distant because of missed opportunities like this.

The final frustration of "The Age of Innocence" is probably Wharton's fault, although it has been too many years since I read the book to be sure. While May does not have a lot of screen time or personality, she gnaws at one's mind as a quandary. Is she evil or innocent? The movie's somewhat intrusive narrator suggests that she is merely a product of her environment who does what her culture deems right. As an observer of her marriage, however, you have to wonder if she is not a master of passive aggression, a vicious manipulator and the bane of Newland's existence. When viewed as the embodiment of the society under scrutiny, I guess she is both. Narrow, self-certain, and refined, Newland's wife and his world dictate the substance of his life.

Copyright © 2008 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.