“The Oldest Person in the World” takes an interesting idea for a documentary and makes something quietly moving about watching its elderly subjects come and go over the course of a decade. Filmed beginning in 2015, director Sam Green’s project follows successive Guinness World Record holders for the oldest living person on Earth. The fact that he was able to keep returning to the subject for ten years is pretty remarkable in itself.
In the process, Green finds some genuinely affecting things to say about mortality. Each new record holder arrives with the same strange distinction, only to hold the title briefly before eventually dying. There’s something bittersweet about that cycle. These supercentenarians also feel like living links to a world that has largely disappeared, carrying memories from another era while quietly approaching the end of their own lives.
The best parts of the film are often the simplest. Listening to these extremely old people talk about death, family, memory, and life gives the film an intimate quality. Many of them seem remarkably at peace with mortality, which gives the documentary a nice perspective on something most of us spend our lives trying not to think about. This is a tale about time itself, and how little control any of us really have over it.
The problem is that the people being interviewed aren’t always especially compelling to watch for long stretches. Extreme age and frailty understandably limit how dynamic these conversations can be. There are plenty of thoughtful observations, but the film can feel slow and a little flat, especially when Green’s exasperating narration takes over.
Green also inserts himself into the documentary more than I wanted. His own health problems and personal life become increasingly prominent, and while there’s a reasonable connection between his experiences and the film’s larger questions about mortality, it sometimes feels like the director is drifting away from his subjects to talk about himself. His medical updates can even overshadow the very people the film set out to document. His voiceover doesn’t help much, either. It’s deliberately understated, but I found it more bland and droll than witty or insightful.
Still, the film’s gentle, meditative tone does suit its subject. This was never going to be a high energy documentary, and there’s value in simply sitting with the strange reality that every person who becomes the oldest person in the world is, sooner or later, replaced by someone else.
“The Oldest Person in the World” is a fairly good film, and at times a beautiful one. I just wish Green had trusted his subjects a little more and himself a little less. The central idea is fascinating enough on its own, and spending ten years of watching the oldest person in the world change hands again and again until the record itself starts to feel almost meaningless really makes you stop and think. What matters is the time they had, and what they did with it.
By: Louisa Moore
Screen Zealots 