The Age of Innocence

Very solid period piece from Martin Scorsese. What it lacks of pure entertainment value it makes up for with subtlety and great direction. I can't say I count it among his best, however. Maybe it's because the theme of people in high society merely playing roles and never getting to truly live is a bit too familiar, or maybe it's because at nearly 140 minutes the movie does sometimes feel a bit dry; I'm not sure. Whatever it is, it makes The Age of Innocence easier to respect than to love.

I don't like Michelle Pfeiffer, she's the worst. I do like Daniel Day Lewis, he's the best. END OF REVIEW. Almost. Uh I was slightly bored by this movie, and by slightly I mean significantly bored. I get that it's all about vain and shallow people in their own little insular world, but at some point I found that it started to feel like we were expected to latch onto their lives as if we cared. I really didn't. I guess the love story was supposed to be the focal point, but I didn't buy it.

This superb movie can be described as, in a way, the anti-ROOM WITH A VIEW, in the same way as GOODFELLAS is the anti-GODFATHER. Where ROOM WITH A VIEW was in a sense a dramatic film, even an action film, this is a film in which nothing happens. It is a great shame that I only realised in May 2022 that the Duke is played by Kevin Sanders, who a couple of decades earlier had been a TV news personality in Australia and a great friend of my father (who I'm sure saw this film without noticing him).

Ranks up there with Goodfellas and Raging Bull. Everything about this movie is just awesome, even the narration which at first kind of bothered me (it feels like that part of the script had quite a few re-writes with a 19th century thesaurus handy), it ended up growing on me.

Talented actors in a lavish production. I was hooked for the first hour or so by the description of the society and the simmering attractions but from there on in I found it somewhat dry.