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Sam Green makes what he likes to call \u201clive documentaries,\u201d movies that combine traditional nonfiction filmmaking with elements of live performance of both the musical and spoken-word kind. In the past, he\u2019s collaborated with the Kronos Quartet (2018\u2019s A Thousand Thoughts) and Yo La Tengo (2012\u2019s The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller), among others. At first glance, his latest, The Oldest Person in the World, which is premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, would seem more conventional in nature. It\u2019s a documentary following different individuals who have at one point been declared the oldest living person in the world; such a title comes with an unspecified expiration date, of course, and some have held the crown for a few months, some for several years. Green has said that he intends to continue making versions of this movie for the rest of his life, charting the new titleholders for the world\u2019s oldest living person every few years with a new cinematic entry, \u00e0 la Michael Apted\u2019s famous Seven Up! series<\/a> \u2014 so even this project will have a certain \u201clive\u201d quality to it, with the filmmaker\u2019s own career serving as a kind of performance element across the years.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s something else about The Oldest Person in the World that makes it feel like a living work of art. Green initially becomes interested in these supercentenarians because of his obsession with the Guinness Book of World Records (which he made a film about in 2014, called The Measure of All Things) and his 2015 discovery that the oldest living person at the time, Susannah Mushatt Jones, resided not too far from him in Brooklyn. That\u2019s how the production of this movie began, at any rate, but it appears to have morphed into a document of the filmmaker\u2019s own mortality. Green\u2019s son, Atlas, is born along the way. Then, Green gets diagnosed with cancer. As the world\u2019s oldest people appear on our screen, with the filmmaker visiting them in their homes, we see Sam get weaker while his son gets older. The project thus expands conceptually in unexpected, even disturbing directions \u2014 it feels like it may never cohere into a finished work. In addition, we learn more about the 2009 suicide of Green\u2019s brother, a trauma that the director still has difficulty talking about. We realize we\u2019re watching a movie about time \u2014 not the time these elderly people have lived, but about our own brief, unpredictable measure of time on this planet. \u201cEvery single one of us has been the youngest person in the world for a millisecond,\u201d Green says at one point, and it is at once an obvious and striking observation, the kind of mundane, oft-ignored factoid that reminds us of the all-encompassing wonder of existence. Here\u2019s one thing we all have in common \u2014 after that, it\u2019s anybody\u2019s guess what will happen to us.<\/p>\n For a movie so filled with death, The Oldest Person in the World is surprisingly, almost confrontationally life-affirming. That sounds cheap, but Green comes by the sentiment honestly. He doesn\u2019t flinch from the realities of age. When he first visits Susannah Jones, he observes that she can barely hold her head up and appears to be asleep, even as various bystanders (politicians, family members) celebrate her longevity and speak for her. His camera gets up close into the faces of his elderly subjects and stays there. We see clearly their milky eyes, their folds of skin, the mouths struggling to form words, but in these things the director finds beauty, not pain or pathos. Some of his subjects are more there than others. Violet Brown, of Saint James Parish, Jamaica, recites Lord Byron\u2019s poem \u201cVision of Belshazzar\u201d from memory. Emma Morano of Verbania, Italy, sings \u201cTell Me That You Love Me,\u201d a hit song from Mario Camerini\u2019s 1932 comedy What Scoundrels Men Are!<\/p>\n This closeness, this intimacy, is the real source of the film\u2019s power \u2014 especially in a world where it\u2019s become so easy to avoid real-life human contact. Green shoots Morano in her home, sitting in an armchair, and then playfully notes in voice-over, \u201cRight now, we\u2019re doing that thing we do in documentaries where you film someone sitting in their natural environment and they pretend we\u2019re not there.\u201d To cut through the awkwardness, Green then enters the frame himself and sits across from her, and the two share a quiet, warm, extended glance, looking into each other\u2019s eyes. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever had such an intimate experience with a stranger before,\u201d the director says, and we believe it. The whole film could be an attempt to re-create such an experience on a cinematic level: Watching these people, their features embrittled by time and their eyes speaking to us of the unimaginable fragility of our own lives, we realize just how transformational and healing it can sometimes be simply to look into a stranger\u2019s face.<\/p>\n Sign up for The Critics<\/p>\n A weekly dispatch on the cultural discourse, for subscribers only.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n