We recommend Martin Scorsese’s patient, painful romance for its finely judged performances and its understanding of social cowardice. The period detail occasionally becomes over-insistent, but the longing between Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer is hard to resist.
Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence is a moving, occasionally over-elaborate romance that takes social embarrassment seriously enough to make it frightening. Adapting Edith Wharton with Jay Cocks, he treats the conventions of 1870s New York high society as rules that people have learned to enforce upon themselves. Nobody needs to explain the attraction of belonging to this wealthy circle. The difficulty is seeing how much a person might surrender to remain acceptable within it.
Daniel Day-Lewis gives Newland Archer the bearing of a man who expects his own good intentions to be sufficient. Engaged to May Welland, he finds himself drawn to her cousin, Ellen Olenska, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. Day-Lewis makes Archer’s hesitation absorbing without asking us to mistake it for courage. Pfeiffer gives Ellen a directness that makes the surrounding etiquette seem exhausting, and the attraction between them has enough force to make even their restraint feel intimate.
Winona Ryder’s May is essential to the film’s success, because an uninteresting fiancée would make Archer’s predicament altogether too convenient. Ryder takes May’s good manners seriously and gives her a presence that cannot simply be dismissed when the romance requires it. We remain conscious that Archer’s desires involve another person, with expectations of her own. Scorsese and Cocks use the ironic narration to expose the hypocrisy beneath this society’s courtesy, while allowing us to understand why its approval matters.
Dante Ferretti’s production design makes the elaborate interiors feel like places where a careless choice would be noticed. The abundance of period detail is pleasurable, then a little tiring, which suits these people and their standards. Michael Ballhaus’s cinematography gives the furnishings an attention that makes wealth a constant presence, even while we are trying to concentrate on faces. Gabriella Pescucci’s costumes contribute to that sense of scrutiny: being properly dressed looks like another obligation that cannot be neglected.
Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing keeps the social encounters legible without stripping away their awkwardness or their elaborate preliminaries. Elmer Bernstein’s music gives the longing a fullness that the characters cannot allow themselves in conversation. We found their restraint painful, because Day-Lewis and Pfeiffer make the effort of remaining polite so palpable when they are together. The performances keep desire present even when little can be said plainly. Scorsese lets that frustration last, and the music makes it harder to put aside.
The reservation is that Scorsese sometimes gives us too much opportunity to inspect the workmanship. Across 138 minutes, the accumulated detail can distract from the lovers, and the narration occasionally explains a social judgement that the performances have already made clear. We began to feel managed in those passages, when we wanted a little more space to watch and decide. The actors are expressive enough to be left alone more often.
Period romances can make defiance look easy once the right person arrives. Here the pull of convention remains credible, and that gives the attraction its weight without requiring us to approve of Archer’s conduct. The film asks for patience with people who have learned to make themselves difficult to read. Give it an undistracted evening, especially if the small evasions in a conversation can hold your attention as firmly as an argument.
