Saturday, November 28, 2015

Forever Young

The Age of Adaline
Director: Lee Toland Krieger
Cast: Blake Lively, Michiel Huisman, Harrison Ford, Ellen Burstyn, Kathy Baker
Released: April 24, 2015


In this movie, the main character, Adaline (played by Blake Lively) was born in 1908 but is still somehow still living in present day 2015 and looks great for her age. This is because she has stopped aging at 29. An accident occurred to her when she was 29 for the first - and real - time in her life where her car went into the lake and it appeared she had drowned, only to be revived by a lighting strike. There's a narrator throughout the movie who explains that this could be plausible or at least explains it in a way that sounds somewhat plausible even though it's obviously not!

Within the next decade, when it's obviously she's not aging, Adaline knows something has happened to her and that it occurred the night of the car accident. Her first clue is when she is pulled over for a ticket and when the cop asks to see her license, he is very skeptical that she is 50.

The only person who knows about condition is her daughter (who is played by Ellen Burstyn in the 2015 scenes. If you remember, she also played the older daughter to a younger parent in Interstellar when she played the ageless in space Matthew McCoaughey's daughter as an old woman). Adaline's husband never knew what happened to her because he died in a work accident when their daughter was a baby.

Every few years, when her age starts to become suspicious, Adaline and her daughter move to a new location where she adopts new names and identities for them. As her daughter becomes older, she is able to have her own life, but they soon have to tell people that she is Adaline's grandmother. The movie opens in 2015 in San Francisco with Adaline buying a fake ID. She keeps a quiet life and doesn't allow herself to get close to anyone, only having her daughter and little pet dog for companionship.

At a New Year's Eve party she meets a man named Ellis (Michiel Huisman) who shows interest in her but she refuses his advances until he asks for just one dinner date and she agrees. She is very charmed by him and can't help falling for him even though she knows she's in dangerous territory. Her daughter thinks this is just the thing she needs; that she deserves someone in her life

When Ellis invites her to his parents' home to attend his parent's 50th anniversary, she agrees, only to find out that Ellis's dad, William (played by Harrison Ford) is a past love from Adaline's life when they had a fling in the '60s, but Adaline got scared and ran away when things started to get too serious. He is the only person Adaline told her real name to so when they are introduced by Ellis, Williams blurts out, "Adaline!" and Adaline tells him he must be thinking of their mother. William believes this story (after all, it is much more believable than the truth). His wife (played by Kathy Baker) says she has never heard of him talk about this Adaline and becomes jealous when it is inevitable that this Adaline meant a great deal to him. In private, William tells Adaline that he was going to propose to her "mother" and she tells him that her "mother" cared for him very much. William notices a prominent scar on Adaline's wrist and while looking through some old photographs
he comes across an old photo of him and Adaline (one of the very few since she didn't like people taking her photograph for obvious reasons) and when he sees that the Adaline in the photograph has the exact same scar in the exact same place he knows something is up and confronts Adaline.

Now that William knows her secret, she starts packing up while Ellis is away and runs away. William begs her not to but she is too scared to find out what will happen if she stays. She gets into a car accident while driving from the house, one that is very similar to the car accident she was in when she first stopped aging. It is very obvious that her aging curse has been broken, but at first I thought she was going to age up to the age she would have been at that time...which would have been 107, which means she probably would have died soon thereafter!

While in the hospital, Ellis comes to visit her and she tells him the truth about everything and they continue their relationship. A few years later, we see they are still together and while looking at a mirror she is ecstatic to see she is aging and will no longer be 29 for the rest of her life so she can age with Ellis. That reminded me of the scene in the "Twilight" books when Bella has a conniption fit when she is 19 and Edward is 17 and she needs to become a vampire ASAP because she is SOOO much older than he is, except it wasn't as asinine in this movie! Seriously, I can't even tell the difference between a 17 and 19 year old! But I'm horrible with guessing ages anyway.

While it would be nice to be ageless, the movie does make good points on why it's not ideal. This is why in all those vampire books and TV shows and movies when the girls falls in love with the vampire, she always becomes a vampire herself so they can remain the same ageless self forever because it would be weird if the woman was 80 and married to a hot 20 something guy...even if he was technically older than she was!

The saddest scene in the entire movie is when she comes home one day to find that her beloved pet dog has died. My cat was in my lap while I was watching that scene so I was sobbing and holding onto Milo for comfort. I can handle Adaline being alone without a soul mate (even though she did find one!), but the second I saw her dog had died and how she weeped, then I weeped with her! Anytime a pet dies in a movie, then I am a mess!