The Age of Adaline — A Critique
I do a lot of things on a long flight — read, journal, write blog entries, meditate, look out the window, contemplating the sheer scale of the planet and wonder of technology that allows us to soar above the clouds.
And I watch movies.
I choose based on the following:
- I watch the things I’ve wanted to see but hadn’t gotten around to
- I watch something familiar and much loved
- I go for something I’ve never heard of but has a brilliant cast or intriguing plot description
#3 has served me well. It’s how I discovered Pitch Perfect and This is Where I Leave You.
I’m on long-haul flight #8 in twelve months, trying to decide what to watch, when I spot who I think is Susan Sarandon on a fellow traveller’s screen. I immediately go hunting in the menu to determine which film it is and in short order discover The Age of Adaline. I watch the preview and sure enough, Sarandon is there (I much later learned this was actually Lynda Boyd, a fellow Canadian who looks shockingly like Sarandon), and also Harrison Ford, Ellen Burstyn AND Kathy Baker! Plus the story sounds really cool. A woman who stops aging at 29. Imagine the life she leads! The places she goes! The adventures she has! I make my choice, adjust my neck pillow, and settle in to be entertained.
WARNING! There are spoilers in this critique — so if you actually want to watch this drivel, read no further!
The opening is all very whimsical. Through a combination of historic shots and narration we establish how Adaline, born in 1908, came to be ageless and how she changes her name and moves every ten years (She’s currently going as ‘Jenny’) so the Government Men don’t come a-looking.
It’s now 2015 as we follow her through her day on New Year’s Eve. So far a bit saccharine but whatev’s — lighthearted is nice.
Adaline goes to a New Year’s Eve party where Sarandon (Er… Lynda Boyd) makes her only appearance (alas!) and during the party there’s this scene where some beardy guy walks into the room. Everything goes all slow motion as Adaline sees him and he sees her. I suppose it’s meant to come across as like, a lightning bolt moment or something, but because of all the historical stuff before I’m thinking this is some guy from her past or maybe someone else who also doesn’t age?
The next thing Adaline gets in a lift to leave the party and beardy guy sticks his hand (painfully) into the door to stop it closing. He makes some clever remark about putting his hands where he shouldn’t and she makes a much more clever remark about him not learning his lesson. I mean, she’s been around a while, she’s pretty damn clever. She may LOOK 29 but the woman is 107.
But beardy guy, who we find out is named Ellis, doesn’t really take her brush off. In fact, he badgers her all the way down to the lobby and out into the street where he creepily suggests listening to her giving her address to the cabby as a way of finding out where she lives. She rebuffs him repeatedly and though she doesn’t explicitly say ‘No’, EVERYTHING about her body language is telling this guy to leave her alone. But he doesn’t, because he’s obviously learned nothing about consent or personal space.
Even when she’s gotten into the cab and shut the door he stops the cab by grabbing hold of the window and leans in to demand, once again, any kind of interest from a woman who has, at this point, established that she’s NOT INTERESTED.
So I’m thinking creepy Ellis is like some government dude or something who knows her secret maybe, hence the longing to stalk and the total lack of respect for boundaries.
Next day Adeline is at work, at the library, and one of her co-workers excitedly tells her there’s some donation being given of some ridiculous number of books. You guessed it, the donor is Ellis, and apparently he’s some dot com millionaire or something, which explains his sense of entitlement. This is also when we find out that he’s seen Adaline before. He’s on the Board for the library and he spotted her when he was coming out of a board meeting. She asks why he didn’t mention this the night before and he’s evasive— further establishing that he’s got stalker potential.
She’s dismissive of his advances so he employs blackmail — threatening to not make the donation if she refuses to accept it on behalf of the library. She explains that she doesn’t like having her photo taken and he continues to completely disregards her boundaries, devaluing her request for anonymity and insisting that she’s ‘beautiful’, as if the only reason a woman wouldn’t want to be photographed is because they haven’t achieved ‘beautiful’.
She COULD be ageless, Ellis! And maybe she wants to protect her privacy? Didja think of that?
Ellis is not some government guy or some past connection. He’s simply a regular misogynist who treats women as objects to be conquered, completely ignoring all the subtle, blunt and obvious ways Adaline has said ‘No’.
Well done, Hollywood, well done.
At this point I probably could have stopped watching but now my brain was ticking over, considering the dynamic being portrayed. I wanted to see where it would go and how bad it would get because I’m obviously a sucker for punishment.
So Ellis bullies Adaline into going on a date with him, where he mansplains to her about history and tells a terrible joke, insisting that if she laughs, she has to go on ANOTHER date with him. She laughs, I guess, but it’s kind of forced and unconvincing, but hey ho, he gets his second date.
Now, date number two is at his house and I’m serious — there is NO CHEMISTRY between these two characters. If anything I get the impression that Adaline would just like a bit of tail, and because no men her age would believe she’s her age, she has to settle for foolish young bucks who haven’t learned a thing about feminism, respecting boundaries and how not to stalk.
Adaline goes to his place. He makes dinner and continues to talk a lot about himself and miss all the signals she’s giving that she doesn’t want a relationship. In classic Hollywood weirdness, she sleeps with him and I’m all ‘WTF! SRSLY?!’
She slips out early the next morning, making it abundantly clear that this was a one time thing and he should expect no phone call. This is then proceeded by Adaline coming home to find her dog unwell. She has to take him to the vet and have him put down. It’s very touching and it acts as a reminder that she’s actually very old and has experienced a lot of loss and I’m sad because the relationship she has with her dog is so healthy and loving and great and the only one with any meaning thus far in the film.
Creepy Ellis rings multiple times and leaves messages which Adaline ignores because: grief and well, she told the guy to ‘let go’! How many times and ways can she say ‘no’ before he gets it?
But no. He doesn’t get it. Because she’s walking home, near her flat, and Ellis appears with flowers in hand. She’s justifiably angry with him, demanding to know how he got her address. He says the library.
Adaline is pissed. I’m glad she’s pissed. But I’m also worried…very worried. Because the undertone is that she doesn’t let people get close because of the whole never-aging thing, which is fine, but Ellis is a creeper! In EVERY possible way! If she’s gonna let someone get close please, please, please not him…
Oh yeah, earlier in the film we learned that Adaline has a daughter, born shortly before her accident. In 2015 her daughter (played by the eminently talented Ellen Burstyn) is an elderly woman. Sadly, they have no chemistry either and I’m thoroughly unconvinced by their supposed mother-daughter relationship. It’s all a bit — blah, really.
Adaline goes to see her daughter and they have this conversation about Adaline never falling in love because she can’t grow old with someone, yadda, yadda, yadda.
And then my heart really sinks because Adaline talks about her treatment of Ellis and says (yes, this is really a line in the film): ‘I was horrible. Cruel.’
Her daughter insists she apologise because she doesn’t know, of course, that actually Ellis is a first class creeper and perfect candidate for a controlling abusive partner.
I decide Adaline is clearly in some kind of Stockholm syndrome mode because she shows up at a place where Ellis works in the very next scene and delivers a speech about being really sorry and how she realises how incredibly kind he’s been. I was twisting in my seat and agonising and trying not to do that thing where you talk to the screen because I wanted to jump into the scene and say, “No! Stop! Oh GAWD NOOOO!”
Instead I took a bathroom break, checked my kitties on Neko Atsume and wished my wife were there so we could discuss the social implications of a film like The Age of Adaline.
Returning to my seat I realised I had to watch with only half a brain if I was going to get through — and getting through felt like a matter of principle, as I knew I would have to write this piece to cleanse myself and I didn’t want to be accused of missing any redeeming qualities.
Ellis invites Adaline for a weekend at his parent’s giant house out in the country, his parents being played by Kathy Baker and Harrison Ford. We see Ford sitting in his giant house speaking with his wife about their son’s newest amore, who they have yet to meet and have never seen. Ford comments on why a beautiful woman would work at the library…sorry ‘beautiful girl’ … and implies that she’s using Ellis for his money — and suddenly everything is illuminated. Of course Ellis is the way he is if this man was his role model!
Did I mention that Adaline’s value as a person is constantly reinforced by the fact that she looks stunning? It’s not just that she doesn’t age, but she’s conventionally beautiful. This is mentioned often. She’s really beautiful. It’s her greatest achievement! Well done for winning the genetic lottery. *eye roll*
Anyhoo — as soon as Adaline walks into Ellis’s family home we find out (through flashbacks) that she and Ford knew each other in the 60s, when Adaline lived in the UK. There’s tension between him and his wife, him and Adaline, him and Ellis. Adaline is all: ‘She was my mother’ and it’s sort of dropped but sort of not.
Now, I would gloss over the game of Trivial Pursuit, but it was kind of awesome and the closest thing to a redeeming quality that the film has.
Ellis assigns the ‘girls’ team (His sister, mother & Adaline) the pink pie tray and makes a comment that implies women don’t know anything about boxing. Adaline proceeds to win like a boss because she’s incredibly intelligent after 107 years of life.
Later Adaline is putting on a ridiculously impractical nightie and Ellis is all ‘I’m falling in love with you’ and their lack of chemistry is so appalling and the whole thing is tepid and I’m just bored now because this could have been SUCH a cool story and it really just isn’t.
I mean, Adaline is wickedly smart and savvy but her portrayal is totally at odds with that. She’s supposedly this worldly woman of 107! But then, she would have different values, I suppose, being born in 1908. And if she actually looked 107 and had this idea that men should be possessive and controlling maybe it would make sense because, well, that was the way things were for many in her generation. And also, even though she looks young, isn’t it also kind of creepy that a 107 year old wants to bonk a 20-something?
I decided I was over-thinking it and zoned out for a bit.
Ford figures out that she is actually the Adaline he knew and not the daughter of Adaline he knew, confronts her and she freaks out about Ellis because she ‘loves’ him so she runs away. As she’s driving away she suddenly stops the car and rings her daughter and is all ‘I’m gonna stop running’ and her daughter is like ‘Yay mum!’ and I’m like ‘I don’t feel it. Seriously. I’m so unconvinced. How is this movie so bad?’
Adaline is about to turn around and go back when the car she’s in gets hit by a massive truck that just drives away. Seriously, the morals and values of the people in this film are atrocious.
The film narrator comes back in and a similar sequence that happened with the accident at the beginning which stopped her aging happens again — near death scene, heart jump start, aging effect restarts bladdy blah, blah.
Adaline is in the hospital and Ellis shows up, convinced she ran away because he said he was falling in love and there’s this dramatic pause and Adaline is all ‘I have to tell you something’ and I’m unsurprised as how flat the ‘reveal’ is of the fact that she’s not aged in seventy-eight years.
Her daughter shows up at the hospital and it’s all awkward at first. She tells Ellis that she’s Adaline’s grandmother and then Adaline is all ‘He knows!’ and they all grin like idiots and I sit there wondering how I could possibly make up for the time I lost watching this drivel.
Then I remember the documentary He Named Me Malala was listed under ‘new films’! So I watched that and rejoiced in things way bigger than Hollywood, awful sexist tropes and wooden acting — like free-thought, independence and improving access to education, and everything was good again.
