42 - Blue Jasmine (2013)

When I feel Woody Allen is at his best, his movies are memorable (read here Annie Hall or Midnight in Paris); when they fail for me, they fail spectacularly (read To Rome With Love). Blue Jasmine is wonderfully on the mark and Cate Blanchett owns the title role.

From the beginning, as we watch Jasmine arrive in the airport talking to an older woman who we might mistakenly assume is her companion, we learn that Jasmine is a woman on the edge. She is Woody Allen’s modern incarnation of Tennessee Williams’ Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire, complete with dead husband, sister she can run to, sister's loutish boyfriend with his card-playing chronies, and a lost estate, coming pennilessly to seek refuge from the only person who will have her. New Orleans and Belle Reve become San Francisco and New York.

Blanchett is transcendent. Watching the subtleties of her performance, I regret never having seen her play Blanche onstage as she did in Australia and New York. 

A fine cast supports Blanchett, including Alec Baldwin as her unfaithful husband; Peter Sarsgaard, her only chance for a new life; Sally Hawkins as her step-sister Ginger; Andrew Dice Clay as Ginger’s ex-husband, Bobby Cannavale as Chili (the surrogate Stanley), and Louis C.K. as Ginger’s passion. While modernizing the plot twists, Allen plays on his oft-repeated theme of men being pond-scum, always unfaithful to women. He also stresses the idea of how lies only hurt us in the end.

The story is told in a nonlinear fashion, perhaps mimicking the fragile state of Jasmine’s mind, since she is a woman who talks to herself and lives closer and closer to a world of total mental breakdown. 

By the end of the film, as is true with Williams’ Blanche, we feel great pity for the tragedy of Blanche’s life.

Rush to see Allen and Blanchett at their best.

Blue Jasmine (2013) *****

This is a great interview by Cate on working with Woody Allen.

Day Nine/Ten - Shadows and Fog (1991)

I wanted to remind myself that I like Woody Allen after seeing To Rome with Love, so I watched Shadows and Fog (1991) which I had never seen. At first I thought I was going to dislike the movie, but the longer I watched the more I liked it.

The film uses as its dramatic gimmick a serial strangler being loose in an unnamed European town. No one knows who the killer is and he kills only in the fog. Max Kleinman (Allen) is awoken by a group of vigilantes and told he must join them. In Kleinman's Kafkaesque world, he is never told what his job is or where he is to meet the others, so much of the film he is wandering around trying to discover his purpose, which everyone but him seems to know. Metaphor about life? Of course.

In his travels, Max meets Irmy, Mia Farrow, a sword-swallower with the circus who has left her clown lover (John Malkovich) and ends up in a brothel. She makes $700 from Jack (John Cusack) a rich student who is enamoured with her. She gets caught in a police raid and at the police station Max and Irmy meet. We follow them through the rest of the night.

Many of the early Allen obsessions are evident in the film: discussions of reality vs. illusion, whether there is a God, what death involves, how one lives in this world where one has no idea why one is there, what is the importance of illusion. Discussing philosophy is one of Allen's strong points and here it becomes engrossing.

The film can often be maddening. During one long discussion between the prostitutes, the camera pans 360 degrees twice, at a speed slow enough that one can register the faces, but fast enough that one could be dizzy from the movement. Perhaps the purpose is to disorient the viewer because that is what it does. Allen also, a couple of times, has a character talking, but he focuses the camera on a person listening (who stands stock still not really reacting to what is being said).

As the title suggests, most of the film (which is black and white) is done with lots of shadows and fog.

There are lots of good supporting actors: Lily Tomlin, Jody Foster, Kathy Bates, Madonna, Julie Kavner, William H. Macy, Fred Gwynne, Kenneth Mars.

I recommend the film. It's not one of Allen's masterpieces, but it makes for good viewing.

Shadows and Fog (1991) ****

Day Eight/Nine - To Rome with Love (2012)

I went to Rome last summer. It was beautiful. Everything people had said about it seemed true.

I can't say Woody Allen in To Rome with Love did the same magic he did last year with Paris. In fact, as lightweight as the entire "plot" of unrelated ideas seems, Rome would be the last place I'd want to visit.

At one point in the film, Allen's character shouts at another character and says, "Why am I shouting? We're two feet away from each other." I wondered the same thing. I also wondered why all the characters had adopted a stage voice which lacked any real sense of believablity. And why the audience is constantly required to suspend disbelief. One character is "movie lover" but looks like a New Jersey baker? A hooker goes to a party and finds that all the men there have been her clients? Allen's character finds an Italian with a great voice who can only sing well in the shower--so he launches him in performances with a shower. Pagliacci performed with a shower onstage? And the audience loves the concept?

If you want to see Rome, I'd stick to Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday or Marcello Mastroianni in 8-1/2.

To Rome with Love (2012) **