Melinda and Melinda

The first thing someone (me) might notice about Melinda and Melinda is the person of color on the DVD cover. It brings up a complex issue of race and Woody Allen's vision of New York (and the world). I don't particularly feel up to the task of pursuing it, but I did find this dialogue between two random and anonymous strangers that I will let stand in place of any comment I might make. I do think the issue is an interesting one, and my contribution to the conversation, if I were technologically savvy, would be to embed a clip from Everyone Says I Love You right here: [x]. Obviously, I am not technologically savvy, so I will have to describe the scene. First of all, Everyone Says I Love You is full of diverse ethnicities. But my favorite example is from the very end where the narrator says she has recently been seeing a rapper and there's a shot of him with actual rapping which is so unconventional for a Woody Allen movie.

Now that that's over with, we can look at the actual movie which has nothing to do with race. The premise is that the same story can be told as a tragedy or a comedy, depending on your outlook. The ramification being that it is a microcosm of life. But first of all, it isn't the same story, and secondly, I didn't find the tragedy to be tragic nor the comedy funny.

I don't know if this movie would have been better if it had obeyed its own premise more precisely. It would have become redundant with slight differentiations enhancing each element. Or it could have been Rashomon. Because the idea is that you can read the same story as either tragic or comic. Not that you can retell the skeleton of a story two completely different ways with different results. But that was what Melinda and Melinda did.

Tragedy, in the words of Richard Dreyfus from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, is when "the bad end unhappily, the good unluckily." I'm not going to say that the Melinda of the tragic story deserved what she got, but she did drive herself there. I failed to find it compelling or convincing as a tragic story. "I'm one of those heroines too high-strung for existence on this planet," Melinda admits. "Although I brought my worst troubles on myself." And the only thing funny about the comedy part was Will Ferrell who probably would have been even funnier if he hadn't just been doing Woody Allen.

You'd think that this would be the ultimate expression of Woody Allen's oeuvre considering he is always pitting his humor against pathos. There are his funny movies and there are his serious movies. But never before has he so extremely attempted to divest them of each other diametrically. Which is what, unfortunately, keeps it from congealing into a whole.

Anything Else

Jason Biggs plays a character who is a bear rug in a grizzly bear world. He just lies down and lets everyone walk all over him, and they take every opportunity to do so.

My theory is that Woody Allen has traveled from the future to alter his own history. That was why they were wearing the same outfit when they met. Woody wants to impart some post-9/11 constructive paranoia in himself so that he will get out of New York before the planes hit the fan.

"It's very important you learn to depend only on yourself," Woody says about masturbation. But he intends for Jason to apply it to his life.

There are some pretty funny quips peppered through the beginning of the movie, but they kind of die out at about the same time as my interest. I think when I first saw this movie I thought it was "not bad." And that's about all I can say for it now, unless my theory about time travel is true. I suppose it is as true as anything else.

Hollywood Ending

It's been ten years since Woody Allen's character has made a good movie. He's derisively referred to as an "auteur genius." But when his ex-wife gives him a chance to make a comeback movie, he's stricken with psychosomatic blindness.

It's interesting to note that ten years is how long Woody has been with Soon-Yi, his step-daughter whom he later married. Also the blindness of the movie was caused by his estranged relationship with his son. Which must mirror Woody's feelings about his own estranged son.

I've often suggested an autobiographical approach to reading Woody Allen's films. And I've been waiting to see how he would depict his relationship with his step-daughter. It's sort of a very delicate issue because on one hand, I know that a lot of people like to dismiss him as a pedophile and refuse to watch his movies on that basis. But I take a more practical view point in which I don't let any error of judgment in his personal life affect my viewing of his movies. Because in the end, I believe that Woody really wants to rewrite his life. To put a kind of Hollywood ending on the messy aspects of life that maybe he regrets. Although I don't really think he regrets being with Soon-Yi. But it is interesting that, given the chance to depict his Hollywood ending, he chooses to return to his ex-wife (whoever that may represent in Woody's actual life).

I don't think my interpretation is far-fetched. "In order to make movies, you have to think about the audience. You have to. Otherwise, you're just making movies for yourself, like artistic masturbation... You're a narcissist," one character says to Woody Allen. To which he replies: "I'm a classic narcissist then." Woody's movies aren't primarily made for us, for me to blog about them. They are made for himself, "to produce a kind of working through-situation so that [he] can get in touch with feelings [he] didn't know [he] had," as he said in Manhattan.

The Curse of the Jade Scorpion

Small Time Crooks only gave the promise of a caper which may have whetted Woody's appetite to make a full-fledged noir/comedy.

You get the feeling that he is playing, having fun with the genre. His back-and-forth bantering is not meant to be taken seriously and is hilarious.

The basic premise is that Woody Allen is an insurance investigator who has run afoul of the new efficiency supervisor, Helen Hunt. She wants to streamline and update things and he lives by his his instincts and street code. But when they're both hypnotized, a pandora's box is opened where jewel thievery seems uncannily unsovlable and laten longing is brought to the fore.

I'm not even tempted really to dig around and see if there is anything to assist my thesis about Woody's autobiographical method of film-making. Ok, so I'm a little tempted. But this is such a fun film. It may not be a great film, but it is light hearted and happy ending, and that is enough for me.

Small Time Crooks

This is the first movie in a long time where Woody doesn't play an urban intellectual. You know, there's always a novelist, editor, director, something. I try not to read too much into his movies, but it makes me think he's gone back to his Take the Money and Run period.

The movie starts out with this Ladykillers-esque idea to buy an empty pizza joint and tunnel into a nearby bank. Woody's wife, Frenchy (Tracey Ullman), would be the front, selling cookies. But the front is an actual success where the robbery is not. They become rich but not happy. Frenchy wants to be civilized and cultured, but Woody misses having cheeseburgers. In the end, everything returns to status quo.

Woody Allen likes the finer things like Brecht and Bergman, but he also likes baseball and bimboes.
 
I also thought that it was interesting that his character preferred to make an honest living by stealing than to live a fake life off honestly-earned income.

Sweet and Lowdown

Emmet Ray was the second-best jazz guitarist in the world, according to this faux bio-pic.

"You keep your feelings all locked up and you can't feel nothing for anybody else," Emmet's girl tells him.
"You say that like it's a bad thing. Some terrible things happen to people in love. I know, I've seen it. I enjoy the company of women. I love 'em. It's just that I don't need 'em. I guess, you know, that's the way it is when you're a true artist... I let my feelings come out through my music."
"Maybe if you let your feelings out in real life, then your music would be even better."

This sounds like echoes of Woody Allen. But it is also genuine to the character.
Emmet is the lowdown part of the movie. He is crass and emotionally withdrawn. Until he meets sweet Hattie. Hattie possesses the one quality I prefer in women: speechlessness. Just kidding. Samantha Morton is terrific as the mute girl who is the only woman Emmet ever loves, if he would only admit it to himself.

This movie is one of Woody Allen's saddest for me.

Celebrity

Every decade, Woody Allen is in fewer of his own movies, but there is always a surrogate. This time it is Kenneth Brannagh and he is a struggling writer. He goes from travel writing to screenplays and then a novel. He also can't stick to any woman. There doesn't seem to be any real substance in this Altmanesque film. This is supposed to be Woody's take on "a society in which everyone is famous," to borrow a line from the movie. And it is full of celebrities. But they don't do anything. Maybe that's the critique. That celebrity is a facade and the notion of notriety is shallow at best. Even if that were true, I don't know if it makes the movie exactly a scathing commentary. I think that the later Small Time Crooks, although not directly about celebrities, is a much more astute indictment of success in the supposed American dream.