‘The Oldest Person in the World’ and the lessons of mortality

By ALISSA WILKINSON

At any given time, there’s one human on our planet who’s the oldest one alive. Most of us will never hold that title. But, as director Sam Green reminds us in his charming and often moving documentary, “The Oldest Person in the World” (in theaters), we were all once the youngest person on Earth, if only for a fraction of a second.

Time moves inexorably, and the real subject of Green’s film is how we deal with the implication that someday, all of us who are here will be gone. It begins in 2015 with his attempt to glean some wisdom from the oldest person at the time, Susannah Mushatt Jones of New York City’s Brooklyn borough. But at her 116th birthday party, she couldn’t keep her eyes open, and it soon becomes clear that this will not be a movie full of sage advice. (She died the following year.)

Over the next decade, Green seeks out the current oldest person — almost always a woman — and often has a conversation of one kind or another. Sometimes they sing or recite poetry. Sometimes they just sit quietly.

Meanwhile, time is passing, and Green’s life is increasingly woven into the film. He celebrates the birth of his son, Atlas. He weathers a multiple myeloma diagnosis and the contemplation of his own mortality that comes with it. He considers why he is even making the movie in the first place, which he realizes may have to do with his brother, who died by suicide years earlier. He muses about the possibility of continuing to make films about the oldest person in the world, perhaps with Atlas taking over someday.

It’s the kind of essay film that Green is especially skilled at, with himself as narrator. His previous work, “32 Sounds” (2022), about how sound shapes our perception of time and the world around us, was meant to be watched with headphones — and live, if possible, though it premiered while the pandemic was still making that tricky. Some of his other credits, like “The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller” (2012) and “A Thousand Thoughts” (2018), are designed to screen with live elements, like music (from the band Yo La Tengo and the Kronos Quartet, respectively). Watching these, you often find yourself considering your physical existence, the way bodies act and react to sensory stimuli.

“The Oldest Person in the World” can’t help but do the same, but for different reasons. Seeing Atlas get older or signs of the pandemic appear, then slowly fade, I found myself thinking about where I was in each of these moments. I had no idea who the oldest person in the world was at the time, but I can tell you what I was feeling, how I was spending my own days, during each of those 10 years. My experiences were mostly different from Green’s. But once 2020 hit, I was aware of my own mortality, and so was everyone else.

One of the oldest people who Green talks to, Maria Branyas Morera (who would die at 117 in 2024), does offer advice. “You are young,” she says. “Now is the time to do good works.” It feels like a benediction or a blessing, or maybe a charge. Unlike Green’s subjects, you might never be the oldest person. But your years on the planet have meaning, too.