One of Martin Scorsese’s most well-received films—and there are many—is Taxi Driver. It came out 1976; it was the same year that Jimmy Carter was elected president, and Apple was founded.
It’s now the second decade of the 21st century. You’d think a man who directed an acclaimed film in the 70s would have wrapped up his career some time ago.
Not so with Martin Scorsese.
Hard-earned success came early in his life (his early 30s), and since then he’s never taken his foot from the pedal. His decades of supreme artistry have won him all sorts of prestigious awards, but it’s his unceasing passion in pursuing his love of directing that is perhaps most admirable. Within just the last ten years he’s directed at least five major films, including The Wolf on Wall Street. All this from a man in his 70s. (He’ll turn 80 at the end of this year.)
I’m no film aficionado or Scorsese diehard, but when I recently reread Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, it occurred to me that I still had not watched the film adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel by this storied director.
For that matter, I still haven’t seen lots of Scorsese’s films. But of the handful that I have seen—Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Shutter Island, There Will be Blood—I enjoyed them all. The latter especially.
That film stars Daniel Day-Lewis, who is also the star in the Age of Innocence (1993). In the former film he plays Daniel Plainview, an absolutely firebrand of a character who, after striking oil in California, becomes a powerful and ruthless oil magnate. In the latter film, he plays the exquisitely dressed Newland Archer, a well-bred, mild-mannered, high-society fellow from New York.
These are obviously very different characters in very different situations. Yet the two protagonists are still flesh and blood, susceptible to love and hate and jealousy, and intent on pursuing their dreams and desires. The external forces which guide their rules of thought and behavior, however, is the difference between night and day.
In the world of Newland Archer the forces are omnipresent, even if frequently subtle. Like nearly everyone in Newland’s social circle, his life revolves around a sacrosanct code of conduct. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that a very particular strand of social mores is practically ingrained in these characters’ DNA—directing how they think, and act, and feel.
The narrator of the film sums up Newland and his environment perfectly: “This was a world balanced so precariously that its harmony could be shattered by a whisper.”
Appropriately enough, from the film’s opening scene—a lavish night at the opera—it’s clear that the story about to unfold is one that features a very specific set of people, at a very specific time, and who inhabit a very specific milieu.
And that milieu is the elite society of New York City, circa 1870.
It’s a mark of Scorcese’s artistry as a storyteller that, strange and distant though this world often feels, it quickly becomes our world, too.
We learn how dinner invitations are sent and replied to (sometimes what isn’t said is far more telling than what is); how some families rank higher than others when it comes to settling final matters of social conduct; how a female should wait two years before wearing a fashionable Parisian dress in America. And on and on.
It’s easy to watch this film and react with amused looks about some of the etiquette displayed—that is, until one quickly recalls that our world, too, has plenty of strict social formalities, especially depending on what circles one inhabits. Some of these social expectations are perfectly reasonable, others ludicrous and mind-numbing.
It is, at any rate, from the very particular vantage points of the characters that we must view their inner and outer conflicts; the true weight of their decision-making and emotional burdens can only be felt by putting ourselves directly in their shoes.
It’s through Newland Archer’s eyes that we first see the fissures and cracks start to form in what would, on the surface, appear to be an idyllic relationship. Newland Archer and May Welland are, after all, cut from the same refined cloth, and seem to be in love. Shortly into the film, their engagement is announced.
Among those who learn of the engagement is the Countess Olenska (May’s cousin), who has just recently come back to New York in an attempt to remove herself from an abrasive and philanderous husband. (Legally, the marriage is still very much intact.) She’s been assisted in this move by the Count’s own secretary, who, it’s hinted, may have played a larger role in Ellen’s life than merely helping her to leave.
Though born into the same highly-refined society as her cousin, Ellen’s path has been anything but conventional. Raised by the Marchioness Mason across the seas, Ellen has been the recipient of European culture and society, not American. Combined with her natural free-spirited personality, she’s the odd duck in her family.
That certainly remains the case when she returns to New York. Though she’s received decently enough, very few in her family circle truly understand her: such, after all, is Ellen’s way of life a contrast and challenge to the conventions which define the world she’s from.
Newland Archer is one of the very few who “gets” her. He’s not only sympathetic to the outlook and sentiments of Ellen, but holds many of them himself. But even more consequential is his realization that May, his fiancée holds few, if any, of these perspectives.
Archer, then, is presented with two very different women: a fiancée who offers convention and steadiness, and a (still married) social pariah who offers freedom, passion, and a kind of exciting volatility to all the wonders that life can offer. Unfortunately for Archer—as well as the futures of these two women—he appreciates both sets of values.
Unsurprisingly, tension is everywhere in this film, including in all those dazzling scenes which characterize upper-crust New York society in the 1870s. From elaborate balls and fancy dinners, to dimly lit libraries and snowy night-time carriage rides, opulence and splendor fills our screen throughout this film.
As with the novel, I found myself most enjoying the last quarter of the film. The relatively slow-paced first half offers up rich satisfactions towards the end, as we comprehend more and more just how much the constraints and forces on the characters have been working all along.
The Age of Innocence is an exquisitely written story by Edith Wharton, and in the hands of Martin Scorsese it becomes an exquisitely beautiful story to watch.
Spectatio 