Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 2, 1993 TAG: 9310020109
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
And perhaps the main lesson to be drawn from "The Age of Innocence" is that Merchant-Ivory films should be left to the Merchant-Ivory Company.
Scorsese's adaption of Edith Wharton's 1920 novel of thwarted love and manners amid old New York society aspires to the languid pace and visual gorgeousness of films like "Howard's End" and "A Room With a View."
On the technical level it is a smashing success. This is one of the most lushly beautiful of films of the year, 136 minutes of moving oil painting that is visually stunning from the opening shot to the final frame.
But on the level of story, Scorsese introduces subtle and not-so-subtle changes of emphases that introduce an anachronistic 1990s element into a story set in the 1870s.
Daniel ("Last of the Mohicans") Day-Lewis somewhat woodenly plays the young lawyer Newland Archer, who is engaged to May Welland (Winona Ryder). Both Archer and Welland move in the cream of New York society, whose mores and manners were so mordantly delineated by Wharton.
But Archer falls in love with May's cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer), who fled a bad marriage in Europe and arrives in New York City trailing scandalous stories that are feasted on by New York's hypocritical Gilded Age upper crust. Though Archer marries May, he is willing to throw over everything for the Countess - but his plans are frustrated at every turn by what Wharton called "an atmosphere of faint implications and pale delicacies."
In her novel, Wharton managed to expose the cruelties and excesses of upper-class manners without implying that they lack all redeeming value.
But Scorsese, true to the '90s Hollywood ethos, wants us to see this complex matrix of social definitions and expectations primarily as a hindrance to the Imperial Self. "Nothing's done that can't be undone," pleads Archer as he tries to persuade the Countess to run away - and this might be Scorsese's motto in "The Age of Innocence."
In Wharton's novel Archer is more nuanced and has less of a rebel nature. "Few things seemed to Newland Archer more awful than an offense against `Taste,' that far-off divinity of whom `Form' was the more visible representative and vice-regent," wrote Wharton. This is not the Archer portrayed by Day-Lewis.
But we can depend on Americans to get the technical aspects of this kind of film perfect, which is precisely what Scorsese did. The period detail in this show - costumes, furniture, table settings, food, music - is fanatically, slavishly correct. The film is worth seeing for this aspect alone.
If he had only devoted that same degree of attention to the spirit of Wharton's tale, "The Age of Innocence" would have been a better movie.
\ The Age of Innocence: ** 1/2
A Columbia Picture release showing at Salem Valley 8. Rated PG for subject matter.
by CNB