Review of The Age of Adaline (2015) by Spangle — 25 Jun 2017

Armed with narration that makes it sound like a mystery show about a vicious murder on the Investigation Discovery channel, The Age of Adaline is a romantic fantasy film about the Curious Case of Adaline Bowman (Blake Lively). Living an average, if unextraordinary, life initially, Adaline's existence is throw into disarray one night. After the death of her husband, she is driving to meet her parents who have her daughter Fleming with them to spend the weekend. However, after a rare California snow dusting, the slick roads lead to her getting into a car accident. Nearing death, she is shocked back to life by a lightning bolt that hits the water she is submerged in and, unbeknownst to her, it changes her life forever. From that day on, she stops aging. What unfolds is a film that may not be revolutionary, but is nonetheless an interesting concept realized in a minor chick flick fashion that manages to still be interesting, but too focused on being cute to really delve too deep into its questions.

Ignoring the fact that poor Adaline is an awful driver and that defibrilators/lighting do not have that kind of impact on a person, The Age of Adaline is nonetheless a compelling film. Introducing the fact that she is now set to live forever, the film smartly shows the good with the bad. Given all the time in the world, she can slowly grow her investment portfolio, accumulate knowledge about various world events, and learn many different languages. Constantly moving and getting new identities to hide from those who would want to study her, Adaline also gets the rare chance to live many different lives and to see a variety of places throughout the world, though her heart is always in San Francisco. Being able to live forever, if one is willing to accept the bad, can be an enlightening experience that has allowed Adaline to have a ringside seat to history for the entirety of her life.

However, the bad is very bad. Having to disconnect from emotion in its entirety, Adaline only allows herself two things: her daughter Fleming (Ellen Burstyn) and her dog. Unfortunately, when that dog dies, she is forced to once again confront the fact that everybody else is mortal and she is cursed with immortality. Pushing away men who would fill the void in her life quite gladly, Adaline's existence may be one that is knowledge-filled, but it is empty. She has been forced to box her emotions away in order to avoid feeling hurt over-and-over again whenever somebody she loved passed away. At a certain point, watching the men and animals you love constantly die becomes depressing and opening your heart to another love becomes something to actively avoid out of fear of letting your heart get broken yet again. While the film never really goes beyond the horror of living forever being found in constantly losing those that you love (plus the inevitability of Fleming's death), it remains a compelling issue that the film smartly focuses upon. In introducing one of her old love interests, William (Harrison Ford), the added wrinkle of telling William that Adaline is dead (she was going under the alias of Jenny, claiming that Adaline was her mother) is an interesting one. With Ford turning in a very good performance, he allows us to see the pain on his face when he learns that Adaline died, both the solemn realization that he is getting old and the knowledge that what he had with her is gone forever without any hope. In a way, this is the film's method of telling the audience that avoiding heartbreak is impossible. Instead, it is a part of life whether you age or not. However, at the very least, William's aging has allowed him to find a woman he loves in place of Adaline and not be forced to watch her, or anyone else's, life from the outside looking in to avoid being hurt. It has allowed him to live, have regrets, look to the past fondly, and look to the future with equal fondness. For Adaline, however, she has regrets, but has no life out of fear of the future and out of pain dominating the past.

However, through its constantly obtrusive narrator that just spits out exposition at an unrelenting pace, The Age of Adaline feels afraid to really explore its possibly complex and moving themes. Instead, it opts to sanitize it and bring it down to wide-ranging accessibility. In the process, it opts to go for quick grabs at pathos - dead dog - and not developing its supporting characters beyond the very bare minimum. As a result, the film winds up feeling rather sterilized. While director Lee Toland Krieger may have wanted to explore deeper ideas, this is not the script or the film where that as possible with the narration and general "playing-it-safe" nature of the film really undermining its heady themes.