No one lives forever, but there are some among us who have managed to cheat death for longer than most, pushing the limits of our ever-decaying bodies and our cognitive capabilities. These select individuals who stick around for far longer than a century are the subjects of Sam Green’s latest documentary “The Oldest Person in the World.”
The Guinness World Record title to which the film’s title alludes is never held by anyone for too long; as soon as the current oldest person in the world dies, another is “crowned” for their achievement in longevity. Without a clear plan, Green began the project over a decade ago at a birthday celebration for Miss Susie in Brooklyn, who was then the record holder at 116 years old. From there, he flew around the world to Italy, France, Japan, and Spain to meet elderly people in different states of responsiveness and enthusiasm about their long lives.
Miss Susie, for example, never appears fully awake on camera, not even as numerous people surround her. She might be occupying a different state of consciousness altogether. Her age no longer seems to register. And yet, she and all the others who subsequently take her title as the oldest person in the world are symbols to us, the relatively young. As Green suggests, we hope to find answers in their supposed wisdom, but for most of them, the most remarkable aspect of their lives is indeed that they have survived beyond the expected.
From the onset, “The Oldest Person” operates as both a jet-setting series of interviews with these celebrities of age and an exercise in reflection for Green. But then a cancer diagnosis prompts his own close encounter with mortality and turns the doc even more into a self-portrait. This change offers mixed results. It inevitably makes it more intimate and raises the stakes alongside the recent birth of his first child. Will he get well enough to continue working and parenting, or will this become a heartbreaking chronicle of his deterioration?
On the other hand, the intensely personal approach (and Green’s open-hearted narration) renders the doc overly sentimental at times. It’s never insincere, but it borders on self-importance, particularly towards the end, as he ponders if his filmmaking legacy will continue after he’s gone. Such thoughts are not rare nor unrelatable, but there’s something about hearing them out loud in a documentary that makes them a bit awkward.
Then, even if it’s clear that his approach is more humanist than guided by hard data, it’s strange that Green never questions or acknowledges that all of the people he meets, with one exception that barely registers, are women. One of them, Emma Morano, advises other women not to get involved with men, which one can interpret as her secret for living so long. Still, the filmmaker doesn’t wonder why women live longer than men, and whether that’s related to biology or socialization. That all of these women have outlived their male contemporaries speaks to a pattern that seems like an obvious aspect to explore in this
Nonetheless, there are glimpses of illuminating, hard-earned introspection, especially in relation to Green’s brother who died by suicide over 15 years ago. The juxtaposition of those who depart untimely with a group of people blessed or cursed with more years than the average human is a puzzling, even frustrating mystery with no knowable answer. Why do some people die as children and others at 122? Why do some have the strength to endure while others lose the battle under tragic circumstances?
Though Green doesn’t solve our endless queries about the randomness of death, it’s ultimately in the clips between him and his young son Atlas, who exhibits both a naivete about our finite time and a calming clarity about the meaning of it all, that he finds some relief in a future he might not see. Leave it to the very young, and still untainted souls among us, to see what we, the ones weathered by decades on this planet, can no longer be enchanted by. Maybe if we look through their eyes, we might find more reasons to keep going. Maybe we can try to break the record ourselves.
