Another Daniel Day-Lewis film is on your list: Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, adapted from Edith Wharton’s novel.
This movie is always a touchstone, and I imagine that it’s going to be a touchstone forever. At the time, Scorsese was making a lot of gangster films, and I remember being like, “I really want to know what Martin Scorsese’s romance is.” Period romance, one of my favorite genres of movies. He’s made a period romance, and you watch it and you’re like, “Well, actually, that’s incredible!” Because some parts of it are made like it’s GoodFellas, right? There are some sequences where I’m like, “This is The Wolf of Wall Street.”
It’s incredible, the way that this domain of the marriage market is being treated like it’s the lair of the gangsters. And there’s this beautiful voiceover that really hammers it in. What is it about the topic of love that it’s not seen or treated with the same kind of connection to power and danger as a gangster film? When I was making Materialists, I was thinking about [the structure] very much as a noir. Because it’s about a person who is in a cynical job. There’s a femme fatale. There’s a partner you trust. There’s a police chief.
And then, of course, in the first five minutes—you may not know it at the time—you meet the case that changes your life. That’s a pretty classic noir. And the movie ends with either you get promoted or you run away with the femme fatale. This approach to the topic of romance and marriage and relationships being made through the eyes of Scorsese, a master of the gangster genre, inspired me so much for this movie. The chemistry, the intimacy. It’s incredible. The longing, yearning.
The question of marriage and love, he’s approaching it with the same seriousness that he would approach any other topic. As how he would approach death. In general, love is a topic that is worthy of cinema. It is worthy of being talked about with the same philosophical seriousness as any other topic. The great filmmakers all know that—I mean, PTA deals with it all the time. Licorice Pizza is about love.
I’m pumping my fist. I agree 100 percent.
Yeah, I know we align! We know each other; we freaking agree about this—on the same freaking wavelength. That’s why I love talking to you so much. We just chat. We just have fun.
