In 2022, the Academy-nominated documentary Filmmaker Sam Green (The Weather Underground) impressed the audiences with a sonic experiment in his 32 Sounds. Mixed as an experiment to watch at the theater and scenes where the sound echoes differently in each soundbar, it illustrates how, underneath the technical experimentation, Green’s films are reflections on himself and his family. The filmmaker is a kind of an anti-Wiseman, stylistically, where Sam influences the narratives through his direct point of view, Wiseman crafts the observational sub-genre through the repealing of interference.
The same impression from his latest applies to his newest, The Oldest Person in the World, another of his films to world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Firstly, the project originated from his interest and obsession with the Guinness World Record books, which are published annually with information on world records. In his filmography, it is not the first time the director approached it. In 2014, he studied the collective fascination with the book series in his film The Measure of All Things. Yet, it has another focus on this documentary, which is the record of the current oldest living human at the time of publishing.
Green begins his project by narrating over footage from July 7th, 2015, ten years ago. Wearing a suit, he appears in front of the cameras with a cardboard with crooked letters written by a black penmarker. They inform us about the date and the director of that project: Sam. He tells us where he is and why. By reading the Guinness, he found out about Susan Mushatt Jones, the oldest person alive at the time of that filming. Coincidentally, he discovers that the woman lives in Brooklyn, a few blocks from his apartment, and he filmed her 116th birthday party, where he states what journalists usually do not approach when covering the topic. Yes, she is the oldest woman alive. But she is barely aware of her surroundings. Susan spends half of the celebration with her neck down, sleeping. Looking back at that first footage, the origin of this project, Green realizes the difference between a long life and a lived life.
Throughout the realization of the differences between those two words regarding the existence, Green notices the importance of reflection upon life during his interviews with subsequent record holders: Emma Morano from Italy, James Parrish from Jamaica, and then Kane Tanaka from Japan, a woman so full of life that it forces him to interview the second-oldest person, just in case. However, despite the fascinating documentation of fascinating trivia, the life (or lack of it) of the oldest persons in the world, particularly from a perspective that journalism does not take on, Green faces a leukemia diagnosis, and the confrontation of his life status. Suddenly, like 32 Sounds, his life melds with the film’s thesis, shifting from a study on longevity to a reflection on mortality. Consequently, it is not a talking-head documentary on the world’s oldest seniors, despite it not being that conventional in that regard. The filmmaker graciously opens up about his sickness and the confusion provoked by it, at the same time as the birth of his child, Atlas. Jokingly, Green states how, for a second, all of us are the youngest individuals on the planet, but the chance of being the oldest is so slight.
The ordinary melancholy in Green’s work presents itself, such as the death of his brother, found asphyxiated in the trunk of a car in a parking lot. Despite filming with the record bearers, the emotional thread of the film lies in the reflections from the director himself, particularly on his personal life. He was cured by an experimental drug, the following of his child’s growing up (and the inevitable process of documentary filmmakers to film them), and his mother and Frank, his stepfather’s late romance, in their late 80s. Throughout the formal mixing of a diary documentary with the recording of a general theme, the Guinness world record in that category, Green crafts a massive emotional journey that extracts the most from his mid-50s existential crisis. Is he surviving cancer? Will he watch Atlas grow? Will he and his wife getting the opportunity of elderly love just like his mother and Frank? Probably, we will not have this answer on film, but in a Sam Green fashion, we get a documentary appearing to be something it is not.
At the end, The Oldest Person in the World is not a remark on longevity, but a ten-year diary documentary on the inevitability of death, and its impacts. Similar to his past works, it is a fascinating experience that achieves the emotional core of ourselves, even though we might not expect that when it begins playing.
The Oldest Person in the World premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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