The Long Goodbye

Sam Green’s “The Oldest Person In the World” is a long-form essay about mortality and meaning done as a 90-minute documentary. Long fascinated by the Guinness Book of World Records, a well-thumbed copy of which appears regularly throughout the movie, Mr. Green takes note that the status of the world’s oldest person changes, of necessity, on a regular basis. He makes a droll observation that while each of us has been, for a fleeting moment in time, the youngest person in the world, not everyone reaches the title designation. The latest “super old” champion typically becomes a media darling.When Brooklyn’s Susannah Mushatt Jones turned 116 on July 7, 2015, Mr. Green’s supercentenarian radar picked up on the signal, prompting a subway ride a mere two stops away from home. The birthday was a media event. Mayor Eric Adams, then Brooklyn borough president, was on hand as were members of the Brooklyn Nets, tumblers, dancers, and an abundance of well-wishers. Ms. Susie, as she was known, hardly registers the good tidings until she’s prompted by an 86-year-old niece, Lavila. At which point, Mr. Green shows black-and-white photos of a strapping young woman who made her way from Alabama to New York City in the 1920s. She died in May 2016. This won’t be the first time we are prompted to consider the vagaries of time on the march.Among the most sobering of these is the filmmaker’s own struggle with mortality. During filming, Mr. Green was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. “Why,” he wonders, “does a person’s blood start making way too much of a certain protein? Why did mine?” The fatigue he had been experiencing took on a gravity that went beyond pat answers about being exhausted from being 50-years-old or having a one-year-old son. We watch the latter, Atlas, as he grows and develops into a thriving ten-year-old boy. We also learn about the death of Mr. Green’s younger brother, David.All the while, our filmmaker remains unflappable as he adroitly weaves together his own history with that of old folks found the world over. Mr. Green’s voiceover narration is even keeled and deliberately paced though it does bring emphasis to an innate sense of wonderment. Am I wrong in discerning a certain lift in enthusiasm when he meets the editor of The Guinness Book of World Records, Craig Glenday? The cherubic Mr. Glenday talks about the paperwork necessary to prove if a world record is warranted and notes, in passing, that “the idea of going to a gym to have another two days in the old folks at the end isn’t really my idea of what life’s about.”The elders we meet through Mr. Green’s offices have definite ideas of what life is about or, in the case of Emma Morano, what it shouldn’t be about: “Stay away from men!” From Italy, we travel to Jamaica where Violet Brown advises us to “catch and hold,” going on to recite from memory a lengthy swath of a poem, “Vision of Belshazzar.” Violet misidentifies its source, the work is by Lord Byron and not from the Bible, but you’ll cut her some slack given that she learned it a good century or so prior to Mr. Green showing up with his camera. Then there’s Sister Andre ́ in the south of France: The 117-year-old has a choice word or two for God allowing her to live as long as all that. As for Mr. Green, he’s strayed from a Joseph Brodsky maxim that he’s kept tacked to the wall about how one should “not make a meal out of one’s emotional life.” The trick is to expand upon one’s emotional life to make room for the rest of us. In that regard, “The Oldest Person In the World” is something of a boon.

The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye

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