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With its
nineteenth-century WASP setting, THE AGE OF INNOCENCE posed a new culinary
challenge: how to recreate the elaborate dinners of Edith Wharton’s high
society and give these unfamiliar rituals dramatic meaning? Scorsese’s
solution was to go for the same total detail and authenticity as in
his gangster movies. Every course and setting in every meal is meticulously
researched, and its significance registered in the social dance that steers
Newland Archer away from the exotic Countess Olenska and ensures that he
stays with demure, yet steely May Welland. Dining is no more innocent in
this social jungle, where, to Scorsese’s delight, the most violent thing
that happens is a breach of etiquette.
With infinite care
and attention, May Welland defends her relationship with Newland Archer. May
knows or suspects everything that is happening between Newland and the
Countess, but she chooses to acknowledge only certain information, and works
with the greatest cleverness to preserve her marriage while never quite
seeming to notice anything wrong.
Each performance is
modulated to preserve the delicate balance of the romantic war. Daniel
Day-Lewis stands at the centre, deluded for a time that he has free
will. Michelle Pfeiffer,
as the countess, is a woman who sees through society without quite rejecting
it, and takes an almost sensuous pleasure in seducing Archer with the power
of her mind. At first it seems that little May is an unwitting bystander and
victim, but Winona Ryder gradually reveals the depth of her character’s
intelligence, and in the last scene, all is revealed and much is finally
understood.
There have been
love scenes in which naked bodies thrash in sweaty passion, but rarely
more passionate than in this movie, where everyone is wrapped in layers of
Victorian repression. The big erotic moments take place in public among
fully clothed people speaking in perfectly modulated phrases, and they are
so filled with libido and terror that the characters scarcely survive them.
Turtle Soup is served at ALL the fine dinner
parties, usually the second of 12 to 14 courses. Early in the movie, a crate
of small turtles (NOT sea turtles) is shown making its way to a kitchen).
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