Based on the novel by Edith Wharton, THE AGE OF INNOCENCE takes place in 19thcentury New York among high society and stars Daniel Day Lewis as a man torn between his fiancé (Winona Ryder) her cousin (Michelle Pfeiffer) who has just returned from Europe to New York to divorce the Count who has taken her money.
Most of Roger Ebert's writing on THE AGE OF INNOCENCE centers on the fact that it's about a society where no one can say what they're really thinking or feeling out loud even though they all project what they're really thinking and feeling through body language or looks. So everyone knows everyone's business but pretends not to, and you kind of enter into society agreeing to play along with those rules. Narration by Joanne Woodward guides the audience through some of this stuff, otherwise we might miss it, since this world is alien to us.
This basically ruins Lewis' life – he makes the wrong decisions at the wrong times and never gets to be with the woman he really wants because he's playing society's games and so is everyone else. The only one who doesn't seem to care is Pfeiffer, but which is what makes her so attractive to Lewis, but she's happy to let Lewis dig his own grave, if he won't grow a backbone and stand up for himself.
Scorsese said this flick was his most violent, which is funny, since there's no on-screen gore. I guess what he meant was it's the most brutal, emotionally speaking, and I think he might be right. At least the characters in his other films, however repressed they might be, get to flip out at some point. Not so in THE AGE OF INNOCENCE – here they're trapped.
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