Hoezo in KINO

“How can we be happy behind the backs of people who trust us?” Martin Scorsese mentioned in an interview that The Age of Innocence is his “most violent film”. Quite a statement as this seemingly tepid period drama is sandwiched between his splatter-filled gangster classics Goodfellas and Casino. But the “violence” here is the unspoken, the willfully ignored and the quietly yearned for. In the exuberantly decorated world of the 1900s New York ruling class, the stiff-ironed collars, suffocating corsets and rigid etiquettes of the ultra-wealthy form the gilded cages Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, and Michelle Pfeiffer’s characters desperately struggle to escape from to release their verboten passions. A stupendously beautiful and brutal film that deserves a big screen for the production design alone. English language without subtitles.