Rating: 
Summary: Read The Book Then Watch This.....
Review: Surprisingly faithful to the book. Well-cast. Excellent perfomances by all, though I could almost see Susan Sarandon rather than Michelle Pheiffer in the lead.
Rating: 
Summary: Amateur American Moviemaking
Review: Martin Scorsese is the master of films with a brutish attitude. The Last Tempatation of Christ felt more like a twist on Ridley Scott's Gladiator with a whacked out plot. To say the least Scorsese's productions are driven by strong robust performances and in this acclaimed Scorsese piece the cast does not dissappoint with morose glamour(but nothing more). Moreover the film itself feels Whartonesque, kind of. Day Lewis is the only one who seems at home with this genre. Scorsese, the producers and the cast as a whole however are way out of their league here. In typical American film fashion actors and actresses are "trained" to perform their roles. However after watching other films that target a similar audience such as the recent Gosford Park, Remains of the Day and even BBC/A&E Pride and Prejudice all of which are perfectly performed by experts, one would label the characters as paper thin. Anybody who has seen these films will scoff at the languid pace and delivered lines of AOI. They say their lines as if read not spoken. All subtlety is lost in the scripting and to my final point, the biggest Scorsese mistake. Whack the narrator. One of the biggest flops in movie history is Dune a narrated piece that disgraces the legacy of the literature. Narrators are for stupid audiences that need to be educated lecture style and "entertained" in the same medium. You learn by observing in films such as P&P and Gosford Park. I mean come on, look at Altman's masterpiece where the scenes are so real with multiple conversations keeping you on your toes. I will have to see it several more times to catch everything. The narrator simply ruins any involvement the viewer may have had with the piece. In my opinion it also ruins the attempts of an adequate score to develop the emotion of the scenes. One thing Scorsese has never had is touch. It's all about whoosh and whiz, welcome to Vaudeville gypsy style hurrah. In the end he has only created a decent portrayal of a written work but has never interjected ANY of his own feelings on the subject. Try the recent rendition of Mansfield Park if you want something with some spicy flavors. It truly adds a spin, though inaccurate, to the work. Inexperienced and unsophisticated moviegoers may get involved with these characters but I've been spoiled by far too many superior performances.
Rating: 
Summary: An Extraordinary Film
Review: Martin Scorsese is a genius. Even his worst films are far superior than almost everyone else's and The Age of Innocence is definitely one of his best. He brilliantly captures the spirit of Edith Wharton's novel without ever falling into melodrama and creates a claustrophobic society preordained by an endless set of rules, a world of seething passions beneath a calm and decorous surface where rebellion of any sort is inconceivable, social and familial considerations are paramount and a veneer of respectability must be maintained at all costs. This is a story about human passions clashing with the artificial rules imposed by society and the characters move in an environment so fragile that "it could be shattered by a whisper".Martin Scorsese's direction recreates the affluent and extremely oppressive atmosphere of 19th century New York society in remarkable detail. A subtle and perceptive script, brilliant performances by Michelle Pfeiffer, Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder and the rest of the cast (Richard E. Grant, Mary Beth Hurt, Alec McCowen and the excellent Miriam Margolyes are especially good), and fabulous costumes and production design contribute to make this extraordinary film one of the best of its genre. Joanne Woodward's narration is excellent (she gets most of the best lines without ever appearing on screen) and Michael Ballhaus's cinematography is simply stunning - innovative, atmospheric and richly textured. Crisp yet seamless editing, amazing camerawork and beautiful music round off this absolutely brilliant, almost perfect film.
Rating:
Summary: Scorsese and Wharton? A match made in heaven!
Review: Martin Scorsese may not have been a director you would think of making a movie based on a book by Edith Wharton, but I doubt anyone else could have done a better job. This is a beautifully directed film, gorgeous to look at, with brilliant acting. Michelle Pfeiffer is very good as the tragic Countess Olenska, whose decision to divorce has caused the scrutiny of New York's social elite and brought her position into question. Daniel Day-Lewis is good, as well, as Newland Archer, engaged to another but falling desperately in love with Countess Olenska. Never has removing a glove provided more sexual tension than the scene in this film! I loved this movie when I first saw it and I still enjoy it as much. With a talented supporting cast (Wynona Ryder as May, and narrated by Joanne Woodward) this film is a classic.
Rating: 
Summary: What a magnificent failure!
Review: "Age of Innocence" brings together some of the movie industry's finest talent in cinematography, set design, and costuming. For the first hour or so, one can simply bask in the glorious, exquisite, and shamelessly overdone rendition of 19th century New York. By that time, however, it's difficult to fail to notice that the story is going nowhere. The fact is that the plot and dialogue are vapid, stilted, unsubtle, and boring. Scorsese, at his very best, has a masterful and vicious sense of humor, and had he truly applied such talents to this piece he would have had a satirical spectacle that would have made the great Kubrick wet his pants. Unfortunately, the choice was made to present it as a serious romance, and admittedly as an example of the genre it may be good. But as far as I'm concerned it falls flat on its face. Its flaccid earnestness, unfortunately, joins ranks with the unbearably smug archness of "Barry Lyndon" and the heavy-handed cliche of "Heaven's Gate". Shame on you, Martin!
Rating:
Summary: Is this worth two hours plus of your life? You bet it is!
Review: If it takes a well-made film to remind us of the neglected jewels in our culture's literary showcase, then let it be a work that does honor not only its source, but also its own medium. "The Age of Innocence" is such a film. The luxury of a novel is that it can be experienced in stages -- picked up and put down as time permits. A motion picture must capture us, enrapture us and return us to earth in time for the next meal. Thus, many of the subtleties of character that the novel has time to explore must, in the film, be inferred. Scenes that are free to languish interminably within the novel must often be omitted within the motion picture for the sake of economy. Their lessons elided must be ignored or transmitted in another fashion. The limitation that time places on the film has led some to perceive it as innately inferior to the novel. With this kind of defective logic we might conclude that the sonnet is an inferior literary form. It cannot be of worth without physical length and breadth. Hogwash! The length and breadth of any artform are measured in the breadth and depth of thought the work provokes. Or, as Raymond Chandler once wrote: "There are no viable and significant forms of art. There is only art, and precious little of that." The challenge of the motion picture, when trying to translate the novel into a cinematic experience, is to stay true to the souls of the characters in the book. By doing so, whatever is lost in in the process of distillation, truth remains. Martin Scorsese proves himself full worthy of Edith Wharton's vision and in so doing, proves her worthy of his vision as well. Exquisite! -- and at last on DVD! Get the DVD! Perfect casting, with Daniel Day-Lewis as Newland Archer, a New York socialite in the late 1800s torn between the social demands to marry for position and the inner burning for the love of a kindred spirit. Michelle Pfeiffer is the Countess Olenska, a refugee from a scandalous marriage whose imperviousness to and freedom from the demands and disdains of the social class kindles Newland's passion. Winona Ryder is absolutely radiant as Newland's fiance, May Welland. She is the winning image of everything that is style and grace but has no ability to perceive the dimensions of Archer's inner world -- his artistic world. It is to Miss Ryder's credit that she plays her character as totally oblivious to her own intellectual vacuity. She is in every other aspect of her character and personality, a person to die for. A thousand other actors and directors would have allowed her single flaw to have negatively colored their entire rendering. Yet it is her otherwise flawless character that sustains the tension as Newland Archer must decide between these two beautiful women, with each plausible choice bearing its own compromise with imperfection. Thank you, Mister Scorsese! You have honored yourself and us. From the lush production design by Dante Ferretti to the cinematography by Michael Ballhaus to the bridge narration of Joanne Woodward, there is not a false note here. For those who feel that two hours and eighteen minutes is "too long" to sit still, let me refer you to the movie "Amadeus," where the king is convinced that Mozart's work is too complex -- full of "too many notes." Mozart smugly acquiesces to the king, agreeing to take out the offending notes if only told which must go. "The Age of Innocence" is the perfect length -- just enough notes to tell the story and still remain true to the art of the film. If someone wishes less, I would refer them to the Cliff's Notes.
Rating:
Summary: A flawed but stunning masterwork
Review: Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Edith Wharton's greatest novel remains, despite its flaws, one of the most spectacular American literary adaptations ever filmed. Scorsese's fascination with the manners and mores of small inward-looking societies lent itself perfectly to this study, Wharton's most thorough study into the anthropology of Old New York: her fetishistic desctiptions of the porcelain table settings, home furnishings, and dress of the most elite members of the Manhattan aristocracy of the 1870s are fully realized in Scorsese's loving adaptation. There are sequences--in particular, the Beauforts' annual opera (stunningly orchestrated to Strauss's "Radetszky march" and "Kaiserwalz"), the two great dinner parties at the van der Luydens' and the Archers', and, most of all, the breathtaking archery contest at Newport--that are as classic as anything Scorsese ever filmed. Where Scorses seems to stumble, however, is with the acting of the film's central characters. Daniel Day-Lewis does a fine job of conveying newland Archer's neuroses and hesitations, but can't seem to bring off the dash the role requires: the awkward hats of the time don't suit him at all, and make him look as if he were once again playing Forster's Cecil Vyse. Michelle Pfeiffer, whom one might think was ideally suited to play the Countess Olenska, is often quite suitably enchanting in her beautiful Second Empire gowns, but also begins to exhibit the range of tics and mannerisms that marred so many of her performances after this time. (You can really see this in her "actressy" reading in a sledge of the telegram she sends Newland from Rhinebeck.) Fortunately, they're both offset by the stellar performance of Winona Ryder as May Welland: Scorsese gets her for once to underplay, and emphasizes her awkwardness in such a way as to make her character seem believably undesirable to her husband, despite Ryder's great beauty. (There's a breathtaking scene while she reads a telegraph to Newland from St. Augustine that conveys this superbly: as Ryder intones, against a hyperlush bank of flowers, her delighted expectations of her upcoming marriage to her fiancé, Scorsese zooms in on her cavernous mouth as if to show her as an omnivorous monster.) This is Ryder's finest hour as an actress.
Rating:
Summary: Hoped for a better DVD, though
Review: THE AGE OF INNOCENCE is perhaps the finest piece of filmmaking from director Martin Scorsese. The close attention to details and subtle nuances, the bold, yet sophisticated use of camera movements (the first twenty minutes of the film, at the opera then at the ball is an authentic technical tour-de-force), the precision of camera setups and editing, and the way he incorporates that to reveal the inner, hidden emotion of his protagonists, all that signifies how this master of our contemporary cinema knows his medium, and what he can do with cinema. For instance, just watch the sequence scene where Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) waits the Countess Olenska at her house, watching the paintings on the wall, the ornaments of that drawing room. Through what he sees and what we touches, with some extremely intelligent use of dissolves and cuts, Scorsese shows who the Countess is and at the same time boldly penetrates into the inner psyche of Archer; what he thinks and what he expects in her, what kind of person he thinks she is and he expects her to be. Then we hear the sound of a carriage arriving, as the camera cuts to a long, full shot of the room as seen through the door from the hall way; visually getting out of his inner mind, and observe him with a distance. To those who thought Scorsese was just a specialist of gangster movies and violent drama might have been surprised when he made an adaptation of this novel, a romantic story of unconsumed love set in the late 19th century New York, and would be even more so to know that it was the filmmaker's own choice, his cherished project to adapt this story. But too those who really know ScorseseÕs works, there's no surprise in it. Scorsese was always interested more in the inner emotions and inner conflicts of human beings. He is a filmmaker who is constantly interested in, even obsessed with, human conscience, and how that expresses itself in a peculiar social context. To him the visual violence was in a way a tool to express those inner conflicts of his characters; for instance, for Jake La Motta in RAIGING BULL, the fights were always against himself, being beaten was more of a self-punishment than loosing a fight. Here, Scorsese presents us a drama where there is no apparent physical violence. But in a way, THE AGE OF INNOCENCE is the most emotionally violent him he has ever made. The social conventions of the time, constituted of subtle, arbitrary signs, express the hostility of that tribal society which is stronger because you never actually sees it, but nevertheless understand it. It is a wonderful thing that the film is now finally on DVD, so that we can own it in our home and can see it over and over again, to understand its depth. However, it is a pity that this DVD is a bare-bone one. Mr.Scorsese must be busy preparing his new film GANGS OF NEW YORK, but we could have waited for him to spare some time to provide an audio commentary. And all the richness of visual details that fills this beautiful but hypocritical and cruel universe, a contemporary audience could have profited from an extended visual supplements to know and understand how close it is historically, and how those paintings, clothing, jewelries, and gestures must have meant in the high-society back then. The transfer of the DVD is not that good either. It is still a decent transfer, I guess, but the richness of colors which really shows these people entrapped in all those superficial beauties are not here. Scorsese and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus deliberately avoided the cinematic convention of using an amber overtone to a period piece, and show the colors straight as they are, and that created a strong narrative in itself. Scorsese has even proclaimed that he would have loved to use the Technicolor die-transfer process for this film. Unfortunately, those striking use of colors is not exactly represented in this DVD edition. Maybe we should wait Criterion to produce an extensive, fully-packed DVD. In waiting, it still is worth to own this one.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful cruelty is still just as cutting
Review: No wiseguys, no casinos, no boxers, no taxi drivers...but yet it is still New York, this is still a film of man's cruelty to another, and this is still a film by Martin Scorsese.
Villians come in the most beguiling of forms, and in this beautiful film filled with beautiful sets and Oscar-winning costumes, the sinfully innocent face of Winona Ryder is the face of doom for would-be lovers Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pffeifer. What, no Joe Pesci? No Harvey Keitel? Where's Robert De Niro, and more importantly, where are the guns?
Winona Ryder doesn't need any of those usual Scorsese suspects or an automatic to inflict pain, which perhaps makes her the most sinister of all the director's goodfellas. If you have rebuffed Ryder as just a grown up teen actor, you have obviously never seen this film. In her Oscar nominated turn, Ryder walks the razor's edge of duality, and you're never quite aware of it until the end. Clever girl, eh? My favorite moment? When she informs husband Day-Lewis about her thoughts on him going on a trip: "I'm afraid you can't do that, dear," comes the reply with the most lovely smile.
Don't dismiss this film as a love triangle story. This is just as gritty as any of Martin's films, just with plenty of froufrou (and very well done froufrou at that) to cover it up...isn't that what Victorianism was all about--the Guilded Age?
See it and be astonished!
Rating:
Summary: answer to lilytse
Review: <those who hasn't seen the movie yet should not read this. those who has seen it and has not understood it, maybe this might help> all the answer you're looking for is in the line Newland Archer(Daniel Day-Lewis) says to his son, at the end of the movie-- "tell her i'm old fashioned". a few hours before, visiting the Louvre museum, Newland says to himself "i am only 57"--i'm still young, i can live however i want. but then, at the Luxembourg park, his son tells him about his mother, therefore Newland's wife May (Winona Ryder) said at her death bed, that she actually knew. that makes him hesitate a bit; he says he would go up a bit later. then, when the sunlight reflected on the window of Ellen's apartment strikes Archer's face (and this is a magnificent cinematic touch from the part of Scrosese), the movie smoothly goes inside his own psyche; he sees Ellen at the peer in New Port. if he have had the courrage to go to see her, then their whole life might have changed. but he didn't. at the second stroke of the reflected sunlight, now Newland sees not what he remembers, but what he hoped it happened--and never did; Ellen turns back to him, the probably he would have gone to see her... Newland realises that he's only an old fashioned person, even though all his life he thought he was a modern, understanding and liberal person. he realises he never proved that to himself by his own action. as a matter of fact he remained alsways conformist to the hypocrisity of the society he has love in, which he actually has felt contempt toward it. he also, perhaps, suddenly realises that the countess Olenska that he loved was his own projection of what he wanted to be, what he thought he was but never was. in a way, i think you can almost say that he realised his love to Ellen was an illusion. so yes, he was "old fashioned" and he knows that now. he is now faced to his own limitation, his lack of courrage, and ultimately his unconscious hypocrisy. that's why, i think, he doesn't go up. it's a very cruel story, and especially a very cruel film...
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