Every so often news media report the death of the oldest person in the world, which elevates someone else to that title. Director Sam Green spent ten years meeting those long-lived survivors. The Oldest Person in the World, though is more than just the super-aged. It is about what it means to live.
When Green discovered that the oldest person in the world at that time lived a few subway stops away from him in Brooklyn, he took the opportunity to begin his project. He went to her 116th birthday party (which she slept through slumped in her wheelchair). Yet he didn’t find it depressing that she was so cut off from the event, he found it to be oddly inspiring.
But of course, the title often rapidly changes hands. One past oldest person only held that title for four days. One of those we meet lasted nearly three years. He travels to Italy, Jamaica, Japan, France, Spain, and England as one dies and a new oldest person ascends to being newsworthy by virtue of still being alive. It’s interesting that during this time there is something of an interregnum when the supposed oldest person didn’t have sufficient documentation for Guinness Book of World Records to recognize them.
Meanwhile, as people keep aging, Green has a son (who he notes was for a very brief moment the youngest person in the world). As new oldest persons come along, we also see how this once youngest person is growing and aging.
During this time Green is also diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which gives him a much more personal perspective on living. He also reflects on the loss of his brother to suicide years earlier. All of this makes for an intersection of life and death, and a search for what it means to be alive.
When he meets with Violet Mosse-Brown, who was the oldest person in the world for about six months in 2017, she recited a poem she learned a century earlier, “The Vision of Belshazzar” by Lord Byron. That story references a story in the Book of Daniel, which mentions days being numbered. That concept plays well with his consideration of life’s meaning though the film.
No doubt the film has turned into something far beyond what he probably thought it would be at its inception. The process of making the film and the events in his own life lead him into a good deal of introspection. It also gives viewers a chance to consider some big questions.
The film is not so much a look at longevity as it is a contemplation of what makes life special. Very few people become the oldest person in the world, but each of us was at one point the youngest. Those extremes, though, are not as important as all those “numbered days” that we all have and how we live them.
The Oldest Person in the World is playing in select theaters.
Photos courtesy Assembly Releasing.
