 We're back. I'm Jerry Feidele. This is Think Tech. This is movies you can learn from and have we got a movie for you, The Age of Adeline, a remarkable movie. This is a movie where there's so many issues and so many lessons to learn, so personal for everybody in his own way or her This is a picture of the chief actress. Her name is, what's her name? Lake Lively. Lake Lively, and she is something else. Phenomenal. Phenomenal. Okay, George. George Kason, who's a movie lover and loves this movie. George, give us a synopsis. You've got three minutes. Okay. This is a movie. It's sort of sci-fi, science fiction, about a young woman who's in an automobile accident, right? And somehow after the accident, it's on her, it was snowing in Northern California for the first time in a summer, not in the winter, right? So she skids and then when she's skidding, she goes after the accident, she goes into a pool of water and the lightning hits and something happens in sci-fi that her DNA changes. It's like a peculiar thing. They say we don't find it scientifically until 2035 or something later. So they don't know that. Science doesn't know that. So something happens. It affects her telomeres. Yes. It affects the length of her telomeres in DNA. So there are certain scientific concepts they show in here. Yeah. And the idea is that the confluence of events creates a different kind of DNA in her. And from that point on, she doesn't age. She doesn't age. Yeah. That's the key point. Yeah. So the thing is then it shows her because of this. Initially, she doesn't realize this, but little by little, she starts to realize she's not aging, right? And she has had a daughter already and her husband, her husband had died soon after the daughter was born. So she was by herself, right? With the little girl, right? And she's not aging. And then the police start just like I've had these issues. They don't believe you're that age, right? So they look at your ID, right? And they think something fishy here. So the FBI comes after her thinking she's like a spy or some kind of thing. So she realizes something is going on that she's under scrutiny, you know? So she decides she doesn't want to be labeled as a guinea pig. It doesn't want a scientist to try to turn her into a guinea pig, lab, lab, you know, in the lab. So she decides she's going to chase her. She's going to leave for the FBI's coming after her. She changes her identity numerous times. She's got these people who change identities, give you false driver's license or whatever. And she's running a rat. She's running to place the place in California, Oregon, to try to change so that the FBI and the authorities don't come after her. Meantime, her daughter is played by Ellen Burston, who plays the role really good. And Ellen Burston is aging to the middle age, old age, you know? And the mother still looks so it's in cash. She's in arrest. Ellen Burston has her mother for her birthday. She's arrested at the age of 29. Yes. And she stays 29 for most of the movie. Beautiful woman and stays beautiful. She's born in 1908. And this is like, you know, she should be like 80 years old or 79, 80 years old. And she looks dynamite, you know, like she was 29. And she's a track, Blake Lyrie's very attractive woman. So this is what's basically, and then she, I'll try to make this short because I'm going to come over. She disguised chasing her. And she never likes to have a relationship because then they're going to find out too much about her. So this one young guy is chasing her. He sees her at some conference and he's just smitten, right? So he's really pursuing her, which is really, and she's like, no, you know, I'm not, I don't want to do this. But he finally breaks her down and they start having a love relationship. Okay, let's stop there. Let's stop there. Because it gets more interesting. It gets more interesting. So here you have a woman who has this monkey on her back for years and years and years. And she's getting older. And she's watching, you know, historical events and milestones happen around the world and around the country. And she's learning. And I think one of the most interesting aspects of this is that she never really forgets what she learns. So she's like an accumulated library, if you will, of everything she ever learned. And she's good with languages. And then she picks up languages. And she speaks four languages. She can speak Portuguese, which we should talk about. And she reads Braille, you know, who do you know, who can do all that. And she has all these details about things. And she has memories of imagined living to, you know, that age and remembering everything that ever happened to her, every person she ever met, everything she ever did. So it's a tremendous wealth of information, you know, of knowledge of learning. And so that's what we get as we enter the modern times, so to speak, with her and this young man. And the young man is, he's really a fabulous personality. And he's a great actor. I really liked him. And they have a magic together, the two characters and the two actors. And he is so, what's the word, he's so romantic, romantic in a practical, modern sense. And she can handle it. He's fascinated. He knows that she's different. She's different from any other woman he ever met. And she knows that he's different. He's different than any man he ever met. And that she ever met. And she has a lifetime, many lifetimes, to make that judgment. Come to find he's really wealthy. Come to find he made his money in technology, developed some kind of, you know, special formula to examine climate change. I mean, it's very now. And he managed to sell that for a lot of money. And he and his partner both went into retirement and he went into philanthropy. And so he gives money away. And that's essentially how they meet while he's giving money away. And he's, he's going to try to date her and he, and he does and she's very resistant. She doesn't want, she doesn't want to be known. She doesn't want to be photographed. She doesn't want anybody to know who she is because she's, she still thinks the FBI is chasing her around. And they're going to make her a laboratory specimen curiosity, which she's been doing that her whole life, like for decades. And so she doesn't tell him anything. But the whole thing turns on the weekend. We should spend some time examining the weekend. He likes her well enough to invite her for a weekend to meet his parents. And her, her, his father is Harrison Ford. And they go up to this home, the parental home in the woods somewhere. And the whole family, the sister, they're all there. And it begins to unfold. And Harrison only appears in the movie, you know, at that point, the weekend, it's probably around 80% through the movie. And you begin to catch what's going on. You begin to catch the, to come together of this movie. So let's talk about that for a minute. Give us, give us a synopsis of what happens. I'm really affected by this movie. What happens in the weekend? Well, it seems that Harrison Ford, which is an uncanny coincidence, who is the Mike Michiel Grusman character's father, right? Okay, good. Wait, wait, you got it. So Grusman is Harrison Ford in 1960. Yes, exactly. Okay. And then Harrison Ford, you know, fast forward till now, Harrison Ford is the father, but they have an actor who plays Harrison Ford the father in 1960. Yeah, they have a young, young, pretty good actor. And knew they found him, right? And he played the earlier Harrison Ford character. But what happens, the trigger was when he, when he, Michael, I mean, the young guy brings Blake, you know, into hit the house. The minute Harrison Ford says to her, he's just, God, I remember you. I remember you. And you just, you're a dead ringer for someone I once knew. He doesn't say he was 11 at the time. And she says, Oh, he said like 40 years ago. Oh, that's my, she says, she lies. She says, that was my mother, right? Because she doesn't want to be found out, right? So she, she's able to keep up this charade, right? But wait, but wait, there's, there's now, now we should talk about Harrison Ford. And I looked at the reviews and all the reviews focused on Blake Lively because she, she is the, the title character and actor. However, Harrison Ford in that 20% of the movie, Harrison Ford is unbelievable, powerful, powerful, as good as powerful and an acting job as I have ever seen him do. He's a showstop. So there's this moment where she walks in the door of the home of the parents and she looks at him and he looks at her and he's, he's struck. He's like, he's a statue. He can't move. He is absolutely non plus by this woman who he was dating and in love with in 1960. And she's a spitting image, but he lost her. He lost her. They separated and that we can talk about that happen. And you, you see the look on Harrison Ford's face when he sees her like a ghost and he says, yeah, I know you, but you're, you look just like somebody I knew who was 29 years old in 1960 or whatever it was. And you know, the Harrison Ford's moment was just priceless. Go ahead. Yeah. So basically she's keeping up the charade and then, I don't know what happened to the interview. Oh yeah, she gets up and she decides that it's getting too hot. So she gets up and she wants to leave because there's, Harrison Ford seemed to, she knows that he knows something and she doesn't feel comfortable. They both troubled. Neither one of them can sleep that night. Then she's troubled that here's this guy. She hasn't seen him since they separated. I mean, it was not, I think she had some problem and she couldn't, she disappeared. That wasn't the automobile accident. Was it the first automobile accident? No, she couldn't follow through and he was waiting for her at the appointed time with a ring, an engagement ring in his pocket that they never met. She stood him up. Okay. So now he hasn't seen her in all those years and there she is. He can't sleep and she, she knows because she knows the secret. She knows that she doesn't age and she knows who this guy is. It could have been an automobile accident, Jay, because that's what triggered her not aging. So the automobile accident had come before. Okay. All right. I'll take that. Yeah. Okay. So he can't sleep either. Yeah. Okay. And then there's, then they have this kind of docy dough dance around the house where they run into each other alone and they look at each other and there's, oh, there's exchange of glasses where, you know, he, he knows something. He's figuring it out, but he can't believe it. It's so unbelievable. And she's looking at him because she knows that he's trying to figure it out, but she can't tell him. Okay. Go ahead. And then she, and then as I said, she decides to escape again, to run out. Well, she doesn't escape until he finds, listen to this, this is incredible. He looks at her hand. No, but that's after she's running away, Jay. No, no, no, no, no. He looks at her hand and he sees on her hand a scar and he remembers that he was a medical student at the time and he patched up the cut on her hand and when they went walking and she cut herself. But Jay, that was after she was running away, he follows her and find her. And when he finds her, right, he starts talking to her and somehow he holds her hand and he sees the scar that you're mentioning, right. And that scar was what he was on an outing back 40 years ago with her and she cut her hand around a hike, right. And he had to stitch her hand. So he sees this scar. Remember now, so he goes back to his old photographs. Exactly. And he sees a picture of her in his collection of photographs in a storage shed on this property and he sees it's the same hand. Exactly. Now he chases her. She's on a walk. Yeah. He chases her and he says, he says, it's a remarkable scene. Another one of those incredible Harrison Ford moments. And they're, you know, they're like 10 inches apart from each other. And he says, and he's in great duress. He says, I know. Yeah. And she's the way talking about it. Yeah. He says, I know who you are. You are at a line. Okay, what happens then? And you're at a line and she finally has to break down and say who she is, you know, but, but meantime, her daughter, Ellen Burston, who's much older than her looks, much older, told her, you know, you can't keep running forever because she shares with her daughter that she's sort of in love with this young guy. And her daughter said, you've got to have a life, you know, I mean, stop running, you know? So she, and I can't, the scene with Harrison Ford when he faces her and says, I don't put, how is this possible? He doesn't understand. It has to be possible, right? But because it's so sci-fi, you know, we don't, nobody would believe this, right? That she has an age, an iota in 45 years, right? So, so she, she finally breaks down and says, well, I can't run anymore, right? So she's in front of her mirror, she's beautiful again, and she's in a beautiful dress, and she finds a gray hair. Oh, you're skipping, you're skipping, right. So what happens is, he says he understands her problem. He's, and I think they missed this in the movie, they should have had more colloquy. In fact, some of the reviews pointed this out that there should have been a conversation where she explains her problem in detail. And he, he tells her, this is his advice, just like her daughter, who is now older than her mother. He tells her, don't run, stay. And part of that is because of the son, his son, who Adeline is having this great relationship with, the one who made the money in the computers and all that. And so she's very troubled by that, that he knows, and he gave her this advice about not running. So what does she do? She runs, and she takes her car, she's a big sob person with the car, and she's a very fast driver. And she drives away from the house and gets into another life-threatening accident. And at the moment, she is, you know, about to die. The same kind of thing happens with a, that only comes, you know, once every thousands of years. And the comet, same comet as before. And it changes her DNA back to what it was. It changes the telomeres to the right length. Okay, now she's in the hospital. And, and Harrison Ford is making up with his wife because his wife was pretty upset that he was so fascinated with this young woman. And so everything is cool. And she has this relationship with the boy, Ellis. And she hasn't told him or anything. And one day they're preparing for a party, I forget what party it might be. And she looks in the mirror. And as you said, there's a gray hair. How are you? How are you at a line? Well, this gray hair, in a matter of fact, her name was Jennifer or something. And, and at some point she tells him, and, and it's, then it's, then it's okay. It's all, it's all a happy ending, right? It's a happy ending. Because now she, now she, you know, and it shows that sometimes not aging is, is a negative. It's a curse. She had a run like this, you know, because of what happened to her. But the hope, there's so many things in this movie that the production was wonderful. They followed the different clothing styles, the different housing styles, the different interior decoration styles. They even took her apartment in Chinatown, which she had lived for many years. And they gave it a patina to make it look like it was older, right? And then she has this little dog that, that, that she loves, you know, because that's the only one she can share her emotions with because she's so afraid. And it was one of several dogs. Yeah. Always the same breed, a spangle, what do you call it? A cacospaniel. Cacospaniel. And it was, and she opened just her book, her scrapbook. And, and you see this dog after dog after dog after dog because they didn't live that long, but she did. She did. But you know, it wasn't, she wasn't, I mean, she could get cut and bleed. It's just that she never aged. So probably she would live forever, you know, or at least many hundreds of years. So, so the moral to this is, you know, sometimes your, her relationships were distorted because of the fact that she wasn't aging, you know, the minute she stopped aging after a few years, it created a, put a monkey wrench into her life. And because the FBI was after her, she was afraid, you know, so she couldn't develop any relationship. And finally, she developed a relationship with this young guy. And, and it was a great, great relationship. The, the colloquy, the, the lines they wrote to script was just unbelievable how he says, he says, what are you doing? He says, I'm just taking the elevator with you. Because he jumped in the elevator. He was really persistent. And, you know, a lot of guys said, I wish we had a taller building because that was only 27 floors. And I, I didn't have enough time to tell you all the things I wanted to tell you. If the building had been more floors, I would have told you more. Typical cat and mouse between men and women, you know, this whole chasing game, which, which really I, I, I can't say. And she's in a group and, and something about a song, I think, or something happened. And she said, yeah, Bing Crosby was it Bing Crosby? Yeah, Bing Crosby did that to me. Well, Bing Crosby type of guy. It was Bing Crosby because she knew all these people. She had such a rich life. And she was always thinking of all these things that have happened to her. Anyways, I just, I wanted to get to the part where we learned lessons. I'll tell you, let me throw one thing at you, George. We all have, we all have a story like Adeline. We all have people in our past. We have great, you know, connection with whatever the relationship was. And, and they fade into the past and we don't see them again. And, you know, they may, they may go somewhere else, they may die, see them again. I mean, if you sat and thought about all the people that you have lost over the years, especially first love type people over the years, you would say, wow, you know, it's too bad, but not as the way it is. But in this case, the movie gives the viewer the opportunity to live inside of Harrison Ford and say, holy, moly, that was somebody I knew in 1960 who I cared a lot about. A truly extraordinary experience that all of us, any of us would love to have. And it would be just as shocking as it was for the Harrison Ford character. Yeah, yeah. But you know, sometimes when I went back and try to follow up with my high school girlfriend, and I learned things from her that shocked me of why she had broken up with me. And it was shocking to me because my mother didn't want me to end up with her. She wanted me, my mother was pro-Armenian, you know, she's Armenian. She wanted me to end up with an Armenian woman. And Celeste was French and Italian, right? So I never knew what this bullshit that my mother played. And I was broken hearted, you know, for years, because it's the same thing I'm telling everybody. Everybody has a story like that. Only this one lets the viewer, you know, expand on that. This one is the happy ending to the loss of that individual is really interesting. And then of course, what you know, is a great irony that the boy, Ellis, the character, his son, Harrison Ford's son, was like Harrison Ford. And that's why she liked him, you think really. And he and Harrison Ford let that happen. Okay, you can get together with my son and you can have a life with him. And I will go back to my 40 year marriage. And he did. And he made a great speech to his friends about that. It was another great moment in the movie. But what I'm saying is that there's something about you have to respect the wishes of your children when they tell you they found a nice girl, albeit in the elevator. And so it's another point of reference to me. So this is about family. And it's about appreciating the other generation. And it's about respecting what your children want to do and have and finding in their chosen mates, their chosen girlfriends, whatever, that there's something of value to them. And it should be a value to you, too. I really must say that I enjoyed this movie. I watched it twice, George, once for myself and once for you. And I was so taken by it because of mostly Harrison Ford, but also because she was a terrific actress. Blake Lively, she was sophisticated, knowledgeable, glassy in every way. At the same time, she was, I wouldn't say vulnerable, but open. She would agree to things and she would appreciate how people felt about her. And it's hard to describe, but I kept saying to myself, this is a very difficult role. And the role involves not only the script and the comments they made to each other, but it's also how they looked at each other and how they hung their heads and how the side glances and all that, that's part of acting. And she had it all together. It was really a pro about this actress, really a pro about how you play such a difficult role. When you carrying a big secret, you can't tell anybody. And when you pop up with things that are really extraordinary. And they played this game of Trivial Pursuit, remember that? Trivial Pursuit has all these quite historical questions. She knew more than anybody in the room because she lived through it. That was phenomenal. That was really, that was a key point of the movie, too. Yeah. I think the biggest takeaway for me was that you have a life out there that you can't remember. You have people out there, when you get into your later years, that you can't remember. You have experiences that you can't remember. And they're worth remembering. And on the other hand, you have to treat them carefully, gingerly. You can't have them back. You can't go home again. You can't go back. All you can do is remember. That's what I was telling Celeste. She's got marriage. She's got three children. She's got grandchildren. You can't go back and her husband's dining. So you can't go, you can't really go back to what that was because you've had all the interim. And for Blake Lively's role, that was the difficulty for her. But Harrison Ford's role, he accepted this and he was with his new wife. And he accepted the fact that it's his son and he advocated for his son so that she would have a good life with his son. What a kindly thing that was. But remember, he was a very elegant character. Also, he dropped the medicine. He was in medical school when he met her originally. And he became an astronomer. Now that's a very ironic piece that, you know, astronomy plays a role in the science feature of the movie. Because the comet came back and he predicted the war on her. But at that point, you know, I'm trying to think how, I think they would, they also put a fibrillator on her to get her heart working again. And that's part of what got her changed her DNA back. It was also the lightning and then that as well. And they put that, you know, 715 volts or something. I used to watch Star Trek and Rod Serling. And you never believe in the 50s and 60s. But a lot of that stuff has come true, you know, so that, you know, maybe there's a truth that in 20 or 30 or 40 years, they're going to find a way to stop aging, you know. So that was also part of this. Science fiction, really. But what catches you is this whole notion of wouldn't it be great to have this experience? However science enables this experience, wouldn't it be great to sort of connect your life up from your youth to your elder years and have all those memories come alive? That's what happened. And so I think they did a really wonderful job in telling that story. In every way, Jay, because they really honed the scenes, as I said, timing, styles, housing, fashion, and even her demeanor was changed. She's a good actress. She was able to play the role as of the era. So what were you asking now? You want to ask us to rate it, Jay? No, I just want to remember one other thing. So she's with Alice, the young man that she likes. And he's a philanthropist. He's giving away books or something. And he's on the phone with somebody in Brazil, I think. And he wants to tell them in Portuguese that he wants to buy or sell 500. Oh, I remember now. It was an environmental thing. He says he wants to buy 500 acres of land for his environmental philanthropy. But he can't stay it in Portuguese. And the person on the other end of the phone doesn't understand English. And she's about to leave the apartment they were in. And he says, I can't explain to this person, I want to buy 500 acres. And she says, no problem, let me have the phone. And she starts talking to this guy on the way out the door. It's like, how do they give you the thought? And she says, in Portuguese, he wants to buy 500 acres, sell them 500 acres. And then she leaves, and she throws the phone back at Alice. It's really an extraordinary scene that this woman, who he thinks is an ordinary San Francisco woman, can just chime in in a complex legal statement about how he wants to buy 500 acres in Portuguese. And he's left there stunned by her skill. He said she's different than any woman I've ever met. He says, I know she's something how different. That's what drew him to her. She's different. But he couldn't figure at first what it was that couldn't pinpoint it, because the woman of the ages, she had all that experience over. Does she ever tell him, I don't remember that she does? I don't, but he knew. He knows. And one thing she said he knows. So he must have, either he must have, or his father must have told him, you know, devotes this to him. But he knew at the end that, and he still loved her. He still wanted to be with her, you know, even at first they didn't know that she wasn't going to age anymore. Well, imagine having a romance with your father's girlfriend. Exactly. That's pretty complex. Exactly. That is really phenomenal, you know. And then the fact that, you know, she's like an old soul, you know, she's an old soul, but not in that way, you know, because she's been through all these years. You know, like you said, she knew the Roosevelt of World War I, World War II, the 50s, the 40s, and each time they'd show a scene of her in a certain era with different guys and different people, you know, and her, they had her daughter, Eleanor Burston's role at different stages. They had younger actresses playing those roles. It was just, and the young guy that, as you said, played Harrison Ford, he was really good. They had found him. You know, he wasn't... Oh, did you notice, you know, because of our experience here at Think Tech, we are very sensitive to sound, to audio sound, okay? We go to some great lengths to try to make that sound, you know, audible. But did you notice that when the young man, who was very good, I agree with you, was engaged with Adeline, his voice was clear as a bell, and it was Harrison Ford's young voice. They did something to process that audio that made him sound like Harrison Ford as a young man. It's possible. It's not that hard to do it. He was a Harrison Ford impersonator. That's one of the reasons they picked him, because he had been a Harrison Ford. He had been going around as a Harrison Ford interpreter, right? Because he loved Harrison Ford. You know, he wanted to emulate him. So that... That's a perfect choice. So maybe they didn't have to do anything with the sound. Let me also add that I do listen to the way people articulate their statements. I listen here on Think Tech to the way people speak. I listen to how they pronounce their vowels and consonants and, you know, their pronunciation in general. You probably didn't notice, but Blake Lively was so perfect in her statements or pronunciation of English. You could hear every consonant. You could hear every breath between the syllables. I mean, it was really, really good. I do listen to this, and I must say she was top of the line. That's why I like to ask you what you thought of this movie. What are you rated at? Oh, I would rate it to 10. 10 plus. I really like this movie because of all the subtle things that they were trying to make you think about. And as you said, everything's good. The acting good. Scenes are good. Filming is good. Everything, wonderful. I don't want to give a 10 plus to every movie, but it's a... I'll give it a 10. There's a few little things in there that are not, as you mentioned, that are not perfect. So I'll give it a 10. Gotcha. I'll give it a 15. Okay? Feel bad. Feel bad. You need to give it a 4. At least we don't agree on everything. No, we don't. 15. I'll give it 15. That's what I thought about that movie. It's a really good movie and everything. Production values are just wonderful. I don't want to give every movie a 10 plus because then it sort of waters down my thing. But yeah, good movie, Jay. Excellent, excellent movie. Good choice. I don't know how you find these things, but you find them. You find them. Lots to learn from this one. And I find them on the basis of whether I think I learned something. And I think we both learned something from this one. The age of Adeline, A-D-A-L-I-N-E. Adeline. Yeah, A-D-A-L-I-N-E. Right. Exactly. Which I missed out. It's a lovely experience to watch this movie. Go watch it. Thank you very much, George. Thank you, Jay. Thank you again. Always enjoy our discussion. See you soon. See you soon. Aloha. Aloha.