The Age of Innocence (1993)

dir. Martin Scorsese
writ. Edith Wharton (novel), Jay Cocks & Martin Scorsese (screenplay)
feat. Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder, Alexis Smith, Geraldine Chaplin

I suppose that rules make stories of tension and rebellion possible, the needed restrictions against which to chafe and, if lucky, break free. But I can't see my way around The Age of Innocence, even its trite title too deliberate in its intentions. A key problem is that I can't be sold on shallow characterization being blamed on a time period, a type of forged history based on slack romantic texts and and legal documents of an era. Films have long leaned on these conventions for weak shows of melodrama, trading a well-rounded reality for lazy storytelling. Just watch Gone with the Wind for a prime example. Thankfully, there is also relief, refreshing depth flashing on the screen in very early films, such as those of Murnau, Pabst, and Ozu. Granted, they have a limit in their reach, only able to save people from entrapment in a batch of dull stereotypes as far back as the moving picture medium existed.

So, we suffer the stories of earlier centuries, by writers and directors guided by nostalgia and a desire to pity those foolish, unenlightened primitives. Here we are tormented by a dry, deadened tale by Edith Wharton, her so-called incisive wit and criticism of late 19th century upper-class New Yorkers suspect for her position within the fold. I've not read the book, but the gratingly snide narration by Joanne Woodward, screams of someone far more despicable than the characters she mocks. This is no whistle-blower, eager to reveal the faults of the system, but a gossiping spinster, reveling in the private pain of conservative, emotionally handicapped rich people.

Perhaps, it's a revenge fantasy, Wharton's smack back at a husband who would rather spend time with other women, her secret wish to bind him up emotionally, saddle him with otherwise absent conflict. But it requires not just an old-fashioned appreciation for minor drama (big oohs and aahs please when it's revealed that she thought that he thought so-and-so the whole time), but also a withered husk's sense of humor, tittering behind gloved hands coyly, and ineffectually, covering smug grins. This it seems should read as sophisticated, instead of childish. Sorry, no dice. Worse yet, in its over emphasis of small details and a push to wring pain from conflicted desire, the film attempts to be aggressively sublime, seeking a reaction that must be gradually earned, finessed, not demanded like it's some kind of gangster picture.