Introduction
Due to the progress of high technology, unlimited people’s imagination, and the desire to puzzle out the most complicated but permanent things, the world of moviemaking has become a solid area for experiments. Directors take the most incredible storylines and share their visions in the most unpredictable ways. In 2015, Lee Toland Krieger decided to cooperate with writers Goodloe and Paskowitz and create one of the most amazing romantic movies with the elements of fantasy, The Age of Adaline.
Summary
The Age of Adaline shares a story of Adaline Bowman, who was born on January 1, 1908, got married, gave birth to her child, and became a widow at the age of 29. Everything seems to be ordinary from the beginning, except the one thing. Adaline crashed a car and died for a moment before the lightning strike returned her to life. After that accident, Adaline does not get older and lives in her 29 for the next 100-something years. This movie describes one of the most captivating ideas that fascinates millions of people – if it is possible to live forever.
Analysis
In addition to the provocative theme of an endless life, the film director succeeds in choosing strong images, characters, and symbols. Adaline herself is represented as a symbol of immortality, her daughter Flemming helps to underline the transience of human beings, and Ellis serves as an element that makes life complete, a true feeling of love. It is hard to analyze the chosen movie and take some concepts separately. All of them are properly intertwined, and the viewer enjoys the results, observing people, places, and changes as a whole idea of immortality. The main character reveals the truth that “it is not the same when there is no growing old together. Without that, love is just heartbreak” (The Age of Adaline). It serves as a perfect answer to the question of whether an endless life has to be a critical priority.
Reader-Response Theory
A reader-response position makes it possible to ignore the intentions and ideas imposed by the director or screenwriters and focus on personal thoughts and attitudes. The Age of Adaline teaches one of the most important lessons for people: if there is an opportunity to take action, how it should be used. The main idea is that the world continues changing all the time, even if a person does not. Instead of fighting or resisting everlasting concepts and norms or trying to achieve something impossible, it is better to focus on something real and necessary. In this movie, a family is used as a solid basis of human life (Adaline-Flemming relationships), but love is proved to be the only thing that makes people change, feel, and understand the worth of life (Adaline-Ellis affairs). Adaline shows that it is possible to live so many years but never have a true life because of the lack of knowledge that is explained by the lack of love.
Personal Resonance
If a person asks me if I like the movie The Age of Adaline, my answer will be “no”. I do not simply like this film; I admire its every piece, starting from the way of how the birth of Adeline is presented and ending with the first gray hair she notices in the mirror. When something bad or difficult happens, I always remember Adaline and imagine, if I could have such an opportunity, how I would behave. Many people are obsessed with several unnecessary or insignificant things, missing a chance to enjoy the only priceless gift, a life, with its beginning and the end.
Work Cited
The Age of Adaline. Directed by Lee Toland Krieger, performance by Blake Lively, Michiel Husiman, Harrison Ford, and Kathy Baker, Lionsgate, 2015.