My reason for watching the film: someone close recommended it. It was someone very close among the close ones who told me to watch it. I don't even know how many months it's been since I last saw a film. Watching a movie before an exam was also quite some time ago, so it feels like a very, very, very long time ago. It feels like I've made a good film memory for the first time in a while. The first time I came to know Blake Lively was in a 2016 Woody Allen film called Cafe Society. Blake's face is, rather than what I'd think of as a white beauty, more on the side of an intellectual face even among white beauties. There's a face like Elle Fanning's, and Blake Lively, if I had to categorize, could be said to have a face of a similar type to Cate Blanchett's. The reason I'm talking about faces is that there are often times when I think a certain atmospheric quality given by an actor's face suits a film well, and in that regard I felt Blake Lively's face was more classical than contemporary. So somehow, because it was she and not another actor who played this role, even though she stays young, she didn't look merely childish.
- A few themes to consider
1) Aging: What is it to age? Since this film's original title is essentially 'Adaline's story', it can be seen as showing Adaline's whole life. The scene that compactly shows that life is revealed early in the film, through her reminiscing about the past while looking at one of the 'old films' that need to be newly catalogued at the library. I actually can't know how much time she's lived. I've only lived a mere 27 or 28 years so far. In the film Adaline is over 100 years old, so I don't think I can understand the emotion of 'letting go' that she must have experienced. Among the deaths of close ones I've experienced so far—not deaths I experienced in childhood, but deaths experienced after my twenties, once self-awareness had somewhat formed—there was Chelly. In any case, Adaline often ends up reminiscing many things even when she doesn't want to. Even when she sees a pianist she seems to regard as a friend at a party, a photo hanging in a corner of the party hall held traces of her having taken a picture with two friends. She was clearly living in a different time from other people. It felt like, although she lives among people, she was actually living 'alone'. Because the only times she lived 'together' with others were when she met her daughter and when she met a friend. So I felt this 'aging' became a forged aging. The figure of Adaline, placed in a situation of being 'unable to age' even though she had aged—because her surroundings did not age—was deeply lonely. She was lonely while keeping and organizing photos, and lonely while embracing a dog's pain. That loneliness was revealed when she met William too. I think aging is the same as having more things to reminisce about, and it seems it didn't take much to show that one facet.
2) The film's common foreshadowing: DELLA C arriving and Adaline's cells beginning to age again are, I think, scenario devices that symbolically show that Adaline's resolve and her body changed at the same time. Here, the star returning means, even if indirectly, that 'time has begun to flow again'. Still, wouldn't it have been better to present the star's coming first? And the part where the traffic accident happens also seems to be another instance of foreshadowing. When there's foreshadowing like this, the 'film' usually gains plausibility, but from my personal standpoint it's also somewhat disappointing in a way. A big part of it is that I can't shake the feeling that it's too obvious a setup. But since I'm not actually a policymaker, I have no authority to say anything about these things. It's just that 'the star comes' and Adaline's cells returning to their biological clock felt too similar, and that was the only disappointing part.
3) So? : For a brief moment I even thought I'd like to try living like Adaline. But I don't have the confidence. For one thing, you have to bear far too much life. How long an endless life would be—and that was only assuming a life where everyone doesn't age together. So, because today is a tomorrow that won't come again, I must live it as meaningful time. As that teacher in charge of the pedagogy lecture I'm taking these days says, you must care for each hour rather than merely spend it. Only then can you live a life without regret at some point. Even if it's hard to live all 24 hours of a day as meaningful time, I want to live at least a few hours of the day as if it were a day that will never come again. Thoughts like wanting to grow old with someone didn't really arise. I've never lived an immortal life yet. But if I ever meet someone I love, I think I could at least have the thought of wanting to spend the rest of my life with that person. It's something that hasn't happened, though.
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