Plot
Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) is an affluent lawyer in 1870s New York, engaged to May Welland (Winona Ryder), a beautiful but conventional socialite. Newland begins to question the life he has planned for himself after the arrival of May’s cousin, the exotic and sophisticated Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer). Ellen is a passionate lover who is seeking a divorce from her abusive husband, a Polish count, which has made her a social outcast and greatly displeases her family, who are afraid of scandal. As Newland grows to love and care more and more deeply for Ellen, having convinced her not to press for a divorce, he becomes increasingly disillusioned with the society to which he belongs and the idea of entering into a passionless marriage with May. The question at this point, is whether he will follow society's dictates, or those of his heart.
Read more about this topic: The Age Of Innocence (soundtrack)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)