Movie break: Woody makes hay in England: Scoop (2006) and Cassandra’s Dream (2007-08), Part 1 of 3

Fifth in a series: Post-9/11 Blues, Internet-infected Brave New World: A revisiting of 2001-10 pop (and political) culture

Also fits this series:

“We’ll always have Woody”: A look at Woody Allen films

Subsections below:

I. A comedy/mystery lark, good for Woody fans: Scoop (2006)

Where it stands in the critical scheme of things

A quick sum of the film’s plot—as cluttered as a magician’s steamer trunk? Or as fulsome as a colorful stage show?
Allen’s view of the film is slightly disappointed—while his performance actually has problems, but not that can’t be overlooked
The element of Jewish jokes: One example, to tease out the point

[Edits 8/29/14, including replaced quote between asterisks. Edit 9/4/14. Part 2 is here.]

Match Point (2005) (see my review here) opened a big, new door for Woody Allen on a few levels. Whenever he first knew of the big box-office success of MP, he definitely was able to get several films made from summer 2004 (when MP was produced) through summer 2007 (production for Vicky Cristina Barcelona), and three of the four films made were under the British producing umbrella of at least one figure, Gareth Wiley. Definitely by February 2006, as we see in Eric Lax, Conversations with Woody Allen (Knopf, 2007), p. 185, Allen saw that with his financing coming from European sources, and with the success of MP, the expectation was of his doing good work, not necessarily a pandering comedy.

Aside from issues of business success, the framework of producers he had tells some of the longer-range story: if you look at the on-screen credits for the three films made in Britain, the constellation of individual producers piece out this way, with—on Allen’s side—Helen Robin being on one level and his sister Letty Aronson on another (whatever these levels mean):

MP: [Robin level] Nicky Kentish Barnes; [Aronson level] Gareth Wiley and Lucy Darwin. Scoop: [Robin] Barnes; [Aronson] Wiley. Cassandra’s Dream: [Robin] Barnes; [Aronson] Wiley. An interesting aspect of the third film is that it also received French production support that seems to have been a sine qua non of its being done (we’ll get to this in Part 2). (Both MP and Scoop were partly produced by BBC Films, while the third wasn’t.)

Despite his having seemingly expanded leeway to do what he wanted, Allen would quickly conclude that Scoop was a bit of a waste of time, but this opinion, we’ll find, isn’t universal.

The fact that Scoop was filmed in England, with some of the same production people as with Match Point (2005)—among them, Scarlett Johansson for acting, and Remi Adefarasin for cinematography, with his supple pans and dollyings—gives this film a sense of a “breath of fresh air” in terms of environment, articulate actors, a historical-and-yet-high-tech urban setting, and droll culture-clash moments. This all mixes well with its air of light comedy, after the heavy drama of MP. (Leonard Maltin’s characterizing Scoop as an “afterpiece” of MP turns out to be only in some narrow story-element commonalities; regarding theme and tone, the pictures are quite different, but they are bracing complements like very different items in a foreign dinner.)

I. A comedy/mystery lark, good for Woody fans: Scoop (2006)

Quick assessment: Good for Allen fans; not-bad choice for the casually interested; probably a bore for anti-Allen viewers.

Where it stands in the critical scheme of things

Scoop, as we find from Lax, pp. 43-44, was cobbled together from a few slim ideas Allen had had floating around, and the film, as you first watch it, seems like a pastiche of Allen-type themes and tropes. It’s also helpful to quote the Videohound review at length (and I insert boldfaced numbers at points regarding which I want to comment):

[rating is “two bones” out of four, or the equivalent of two stars out of four] Allen’s 35^th directorial feature is evidence he should ease up on that yearly quota. This time the kvetching [1] centers around a naïve journalism student ([Scarlett] Johansson) who is given the scoop of a lifetime by the ghost of a muckraking journalist ([Ian] McShane), and must investigate with the help of a third-rate magician (Allen) on whose stage the ghost appeared. Feels like a patchwork collection of past Allen flicks [2] with nothing new or interesting, including the requisite abundance of self-centered Judaic jokes [3]. [Videohound’s Golden Movie Retriever, 2011 edition (Gale, Cencage Learning, 2010), p. 892]

If you’ve gotten as far with me in my Allen reviews as here, you know that Allen’s best years are behind him. The question then becomes, what also-ran of his do we want to see, with healthily reduced expectations? I think the fact that movie audiences, regarding Allen, are divided into pro-Allen, anti-Allen, and casually-interested means that we have to start classifying how we recommend films of the foregoing decade by these three categories. Pro-Allen viewers will like this film; the casually interested may take or leave it (but should give it a chance); and the anti-, of course, would go right along with Videohound.

I would respectfully differ with a few of Videohound’s terms above; it seems the reviewer is an Allen skeptic, and I’m willing to live and let live on assessments, but here I would diverge with, among other things, [1] the issue of “kvetching.” You don’t get a lot of “Allen’s character as complainer” here—or the extent to which you do can, or may not, be entertaining, and it is not central to the film’s story (or appeal).

On other debatable points in the Videohound review: [2] Flicks is a weird word to use here; better is tropes, themes, or ideas. (And even there, though this film has a familiar Allen flavor in what it has of cobbled-together ideas, Scoop doesn’t seem too derivative in wholesale-ish ways from past films of his.) When reviewers get this careless with wording, they undercut the credibility of their review which might otherwise be pretty much worth heeding.

[3] The issue of Jewish jokes is interesting, and I will come back to this. Allen’s character Sidney Waterman, a sort of traveling magician with the stage name Splendini, engages occasionally in some Jewish jokes as he employs Allen’s characters’ frequent one-liner style. Overall, these jokes don’t bother me. One is even worth analyzing in some detail. Whether the reviewer calls these jokes “self-centered” because of Allen’s seeming to making references to Jews in a way that the reviewer considers invidiously self (Allen)-serving, or whether the implication is that Allen is merely “being too Jewish-oriented” for average American tastes, is hard to say; I would say the second interpretation isn’t really valid—though whether people out West or down South would not really “get into” Jewish jokes is a potential audience-appeal issue—something that’s more the central concern of marketers—that can be seen regarding all sorts of jokes, and reflects nothing more than that people have a widely varied set of tastes and sensibilities to which they’re entitled.

As for the first interpretation—“Allen is being selfish” in his jokes about Jews: I think this may depend on the Jew (as Allen might say), but to me, what he says that is “meta-Jewish” isn’t terribly provocative—not to me, and I say this as a Gentile who has had long exposure to Jewish jokes both from interpersonal situations and from literary works. When I turn to a specific example of his joking here, I will look at this issue further and explain my position.

A quick sum of the film’s plot—as cluttered as a magician’s steamer trunk? Or as fulsome as a colorful stage show?

The story is about a young woman, Sondra Pransky (Johansson), who was originally interested in studying dental hygienics (there turns out to be a number of dental motifs running through the film), taking a turn at doing journalism work as a new journalism student. She tries to interview a famous film director, and ends up being taken to bed by him (after he’s plied her with drinks) one night. Allen employs what he admits in at least Mighty Aphrodite (1995) as a deus ex machina, in his case a sort of abrupt plot move to iron out a story, by (here) having the ghost of Joe Strombel (Ian McShane), an esteemed, just-deceased British reporter (whose funeral is an opening scene in the film), appear to Pransky when she has been roped into participating in a magic trick conducted by Splendini, a sort of Catskills relic who, for unclear reasons, is plying his trade on a British stage. In the old magician’s box where you put a person in, close the door and wait a minute, and re-open the door and the person is gone, Pransky unexpectedly has Strombel appear to her with a “big” tip about the Tarot-card killer, a serial killer that has been active recently in Britain.

This initial setup may sound so hokey and synthetic, as if only the most ardent Allen fans would continue watching (End note), but a number of Allen films could have rather dry setup or initial-building to the plot, and get better as they go on. This film actually gets to be solid fun once the true mystery is put into action.

She goes home, and researches Strombel and the Tarot card killer. She goes back to Splendini and consults with him about his magic box and the fact that she saw Joe Strombel…. She wants to go back in the box for a try at a follow-up consult with Strombel. Splendini, of course, is skeptical in trademark Allen fashion.

Long story short, Strombel’s ghost appears outside the box to both Splendini and Pransky, and Splendini becomes a believer, too. Then the two are ad hoc partners in looking into the mystery, but then the stumbling block is that the identity of the Tarot-card killer may be a young rich man, Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman) who is son of a Lord, raising various questions with social and legal implications….

Eventually Pransky—who is helped by her roommate, British blonde Vivian (Romola Garai), to get into a men’s club that Lyman frequents—gets to speak to (and win the confidence of) Lyman, faking her being unable to swim in a pool. (Splendini is with her, gamely posing as her father.) In the process, she makes up a new name, Jade Julia Spence, a sort of socialite with friends in Britain, with her father (Splendini) accordingly designated as a rich businessman. Lyman invites her to visit at his estate.

##

The plot gets more coherent and gripping as “Jade”/Sondra pursues her work as a budding journalist, trying to find out if Lyman is the Tarot-card killer, with Splendini “as her father” having to be won over to various of her latest theories and such. The two actually vary through the film as to whether they believe Lyman is the killer, and what is appropriate to do next. This film seems to layer on a lot of “stage tricks”: for one thing, there are the layers of identities—Lyman suspected of being someone else; Sondra Pransky faking an identity as an investigating reporter insinuating her way into Lyman’s life; and Splendini—actually, Sidney Waterman—with both stage name and faked name to help Sondra. And the plot seems to vary with how hot the two respectively are in their pursuit of the killer.

This may all seem like a lot to have to swallow, but I found I could watch the film several times, and was rewarded with untangling the complexity as I saw it again. It turns out that Lyman didn’t kill all the women that the Tarot-card killer is alleged to have, but does kill one woman, and, by way of leaving a “telltale” prop, “folds” this into the Tarot-card killer’s rap sheet of deaths. (Allen says in Lax [p. 43] that he combined, in Scoop, (1) the plot element of a murderer “hiding” a murder in the series of another, serial murderer’s work, with (2) the element of a reporter being so eager to deliver a scoop that he comes back from the dead to give it to a living reporter.)

I won’t reveal everything, but I think I help you untangle some of this film’s complexity. The fact that it’s presented as a fun comedy also makes it “go down” more easily.  And the fact that Allen pushes for comic effect even has him giving Johansson a close-up shot, as Internet-digging student on the computer, scrunching up her face awkwardly, with nerdy eyeglasses and dental retainer on her teeth she moves restlessly with her tongue. This varies her starkly from the smooth temptress Nola Rice of MP.

(By the way, if one should take issue with Allen/Splendini’s jokes, a few are as old—in form—as George Burns was when he died: at one point, being shown around the Lyman estate, Splendini remarks on how it reminds him of “Trollope,” it sounds like; Lyman asks, the author? “No, not the author, this was a girl I knew,” or such. Later, at a smoker/card game in a men’s club, Splendini remarks on once having won enough money to buy a “Rubens,” it sounds like, Lord Lyman remarks with admiration, “You bought a Rubens painting?” Splendini: “No, a Reuben sandwich.”)

Allen’s view of the film is slightly disappointed—while his performance actually has problems, but not that can’t be overlooked

Allen himself developed a rather skeptical opinion about Scoop: “[T]he only thing I have against Scoop is a self-indulgent lack of ambition. […] I think that the movie’s cute—that the jokes are funny, that everyone performs well, …  But it’s not ambitious enough. I wanted to do a comedy and enjoy myself and make Scarlett funny and tell some jokes myself, … and what I wound up with at the end is…a light comedy, a dessert” (Lax, p. 261; said in spring 2005, apparently said very shortly after producing Scoop]

I would say that the film is about what he indicates, a light comedy in his style, including him as a character telling jokes. I think many Allen fans and semi-fans won’t mind it for these aspects, and may like it. It is definitely not first-rate among his comedies, but is all the more appealing, coming in the period it does, for being a comedy.

Actually, I think the worst feature of this film—aside from the fact that it sometimes seems a bit cluttered with story details, reflected in comments made by various characters—actually comprises occasional lapses in Allen’s performance. This is, indeed, the first Allen film since Anything Else (2003) in which he plays a character, and here, as in Hollywood Ending (2002) and Anything Else, we see the phenomenon of Allen’s performance being liable to be a self-parody at times. Actually, I think this is largely a matter of his being aged—here, he seems a bit jowly, with a bit of the more dignified bearing of an elderly person, and his hair is definitely starting to turn white. But those familiar with him will be enamored enough of his actually taking another acting turn, and follow his shtick readily enough, that his fans will indulge him here.

Allen says in Lax in a few places (usually in 2005 and 2006) that his doing his typical character is something he is less apt to allow into his screenplays. (This may or may not parallel, or be influenced by, the fact that his own performances can lack something sometimes.) “I really dislike the experience of having to make sure if I’m in it [a film] that there is a Woody Allen character” (p. 184; said in 2005 or so). His admittedly being limited in range obviously narrowly defines the kind of character he will play: “That’s the beauty of having no [acting] talent. I stay within my small range” (p. 150). Meanwhile, since he is the screenwriter, he can deliver lines while only approximating what may have been in the script; he has no trouble making up dialogue, he says (pp. 167-68). His preference, moreover, has grown toward doing more serious dramas (as will be clear when we review Cassandra’s Dream). * “I always find comedy wonderful and I always enjoy doing it and I always enjoy writing it. But I have a personal preference and put a greater value on a successful dramatic piece than on a successful comedy piece”* (p. 104).

Further, when he fumbles in his performances—and I say this while admitting that when he’s “on” even in Scoop, he still is fun to watch—we feel that we’ll be content if in the future he delivers films without appearing in them anymore. I think that starting in about 2001, after years of service we can thank him for and be satisfied with, his performances are apt to contain him having, in certain shots, a more braying/husky or oddly nasal, or baritone-ish, way of talking that seems to mock how he speaks at his best, or a way of “seeming unable to get out of his own way.” In Hollywood Ending, this degraded way of speaking sometimes is downright annoying; and to me, it does a lot to hurt Hollywood, which isn’t any great shakes on other counts anyway. In Anything Else (whose production was in 2002, when Allen was 66), his odd vocal qualities, which usually seem to occur outdoors (where his voice needs to carry), are a little troubling, but they may go along with—“be covered by”—the fact his character is supposed to be a bit of a nut.

But in Scoop (he was almost 70 when he made this), his vocal lapses—which, again, usually happen outdoors, and in nearly all cases seem apt to happen when his character is among a three-or-more-person set including British upper-crust types (and he is meant to be an also-ran American magician anyway)—are such that we have to be sympathetic to Allen as the decades-long film auteur/writer and predictable-style performer. Sometimes when he speaks, especially in a garden party scene in Scoop, you almost don’t understand him at all. I mean, I can if I work at it, and I’m long familiar with him. (Today’s young, perfect-teeth American Kaleighs and Jareds would be quite put off.)

In one scene at the garden party, he is doing shtick as magician Splendini, where he employs some of his pandering patter (“God bless you, darling!” or such, etc.) that he used a lot in Broadway Danny Rose (1984); and he flips out a one-liner that, content-wise, is slightly weak, and the not-young British man playing Peter Lyman’s father seems to genuinely strain to understand him. You feel a little bad for Allen, if you understand Allen’s type of spiel. The U.S. and the Brits are, as Winston Churchill famously said, separated by a common language; and nowhere does this become more evident than when strong regional accents on either side are in play. Allen, for us Americans, might seem increasingly “old Brooklyn” in his talk, so we can imagine an elderly Briton—who is used to G and T’s in a local paneled-wall men’s club and proper, dry-toned enunciation of the Queen’s English—might wonder what kind of murky mess this old kibitzer is making of English.

In other words, seeing him do shtick with a constellation of Brits, which is supposed to be funny, and finding him almost too hard to follow at times, is like seeing Old Uncle Gustafsson engage in his time-tested type of dinner-table patter, and yet hearing him sound a bit like a stroke victim, but with us warmly indulging him nonetheless, and hoping that people not too familiar with him aren’t too put off by him.

On the other hand, when Allen is with his main player Johansson, or with individual others in more “intimate” scenes, he is usually fluent and easy to follow, and the wit can catch us immediately.

The element of Jewish jokes: One example, to tease out the point

For a look at one type of the many sorts of details in this film, let’s harken to what Videohound referred to—carelessly, it would turn out on further examination—as “the requisite abundance of self-centered Judaic jokes.” “Requisite abundance”? I guess that depends on how you view Allen, as to whether you like Jewish jokes or thinks he uses too many of them throughout his films (I think, objectively speaking, the latter point isn’t really true).

But “self-centered Judaic jokes”—this raises questions. As I hinted before, selfish on whose part? Does the reviewer not like to hear (so many) Jewish jokes? Or does Allen put a twist on them he or she doesn’t like? I think the latter is more the issue.

To speak from my own experience as a “goy” who first got exposed to the cultural phenomenon of Jewish jokes back in the late-1970s-to-early ’80s (through Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, and Woody Allen, among others, and in the college scene for me, GWU, which included a lot of Jewish students): There is a fair and lengthy tradition of American Jewish comedians, whether at some point in their career they aspire to write more culturally ambitious literature or not, joking on Jewish culture. This seems to reflect, at least in part, two things: (1) a sort of self-embarrassment at the rich but provincial quality of Jewish culture (and this would seem to mean traditions, ways of thinking and speaking, and so on brought to the U.S. by Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants within the past 100 or so years); and (2) a will, also, slyly pursued, of trying to win Gentile America’s warm acceptance of Jews by being “self-deprecatingly joking” about same. This puts the matter in somewhat schematic terms, and nuances and complexities about this can be further addressed as I move to blog entries in the near-future that deal with more autobiographical matters.

It’s possible that in more recent years (say, since about 1995 or 2000), some American Gentiles have gotten less warm to these kinds of jokes. Maybe they seemed more “apropos” during the high-water mark of Jewish comedians’ being on the Catskills/supper-club and TV-variety-show circuits in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s (out of which Allen could be said to have sprung). (Ways that this subsection of culture seemed to condition broader American culture are floated—for one possible “reference” on this sort of thing—in the biography of writer Joseph Heller by Tracy Daugherty, Just One Catch: A Biography of Joseph Heller [New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011].)

As for Allen, though he incorporated this kind of joke into a variety of his movies since the 1970s, it’s possible he’s gotten more ironic-about-Jews in his older age (but whether one could argue this is just for comedic purposes is unclear; also, the meaning of this—as to whether it’s sincere or not—would be unclear). Is this what the reviewer is taking issue with in calling the jokes “self-centered”? I think this is a tricky area to make blanket assessments in.

Myself—while I can be critical of some individual Jews’ ways of conducting themselves (not in programmatic terms, but in ethnically oriented ways), particularly regarding issues in this country (just as plenty of people might, for any of a number of reasons, and not necessarily programmatic or coldly dismissive)—I am a fond connoisseur of Jewish cultural things, many of them pop-culture-type; and I am not completely naïve about more serious Jewish traditions. I’ve worn a yarmulke at a friend’s Shabbat dinner-table one time, not that I was trying to make a special point with this, one way or the other. I’ve attended Jewish religiously related services. (It would also be a mistake to think that my experience of Jewish people—as is true for, I’m sure, many Americans—is all unitary and of the same tone. It’s safe to say they are one ethnic group regarding whom emotional reactions, especially from decades of very varied and often-rich personal experience, can run a very wide gamut.)

(In future blog entries, I will go into considerably more depth and nuance about all this area of concern. For one thing, for others to infer any sort of “typical attitude from me” based on whatever others think is my ethnic background would be to miss the mark considerably; one reason is my long-entrenched alienation I’ve had from what German ethnic identity is implied by some of my family’s background.)

And for myself, there’s nothing terribly offensive about Allen’s Jewish-related jokes in his late films.

But there is context to consider, which not everyone might get, and which if some still got, would not fully excuse the joke in their minds. (This is apart from the issue of how Allen performs his shtick, wherein he incorporates Jewish jokes, in Scoop, which to me sometimes shows an awkwardness on his part, as if he tried too few a number of takes to get his lines in, and/or maybe he didn’t feel comfortable enough spieling out his lines in the company of the “stiff” British actors.)

One example of the jokes, objectively considered: in one bit at a dock near a small lake with Allen, Johansson, and Jackman, there is talk about different ones among them playing a musical instrument, and Allen as Splendini (as “Jade’s” father) says he plays the—I’m not sure what he says, but “noose [?] harp,” which he then explains used to be called the “Jew’s harp,” but the name was changed, he said, because in the view of Jews, if there’s “the slightest hint of anti-Semitism, [then] they write letters….”

This joke doesn’t bother me much at all. For one thing, I know what a “Jew’s harp” is—I actually have one, though apparently it’s defective and doesn’t work right. It’s basically a forked or semi-ring-like instrument you clench in your teeth, and in the middle of it, attached by one end to the curved part, is a prong; and you twang this prong with your finger, and the echo of the sound in your mouth adds to the weird sort of percussive sound the instrument makes. It’s a pretty dopey folk-music instrument, basically. (Allen’s brief description of it in the film isn’t too bad.)

How this got to be called a “Jew’s harp” many years ago, I have no idea; but after a while, it became renamed a “jaw harp,” which makes some sense.

Anyway, whether the Videohound reviewer thought Allen’s jokes along the lines of the “Jew’s harp” were arrogant to his fellow Jews—or whether this wasn’t the reviewer’s beef—I thought Allen’s handling of the “Jew’s harp” thing was OK. I would not have thought it necessary to have an “arbitrary sound editing” of his line, if that was what some postproduction-related consideration might have been. (Not that Allen would have stood for this.)

End note.

In addition to Allen’s flawed performance in Scoop, the plot setup is one dimension along which this film seems best for Allen fans. But another—and I’m amused by this myself—is the likes of seeing the Grim Reaper present as a (silent) character—in fact, in scenes on a boat (heading to Hades, perhaps), with Grim looking like an obvious stage prop—and this may get even Allen’s B+-level fans rolling their eyes. But then we realize this is just a slightly self-conscious mechanism that Allen indulges in pragmatically in order to provide a plot mechanism by which the deceased British reporter, Joe Strombel, gets out of the Hades boat ride for a time to give a tip to a person in the world of the living.

Movie break (Quick Vu/Summer Lite): An intelligence-respecting stalker film: One Hour Photo (2002)

Robin Williams displays his quiet-dramatic chops here, in an ironic horror story

Fourth in a series: Post-9/11 Blues, Internet-infected Brave New World: A revisiting of 2001-10 pop (and political) culture

Subsections below:

Appearances become deceiving about the main characters

A look at details shows the craftwork and influence

Sy is put into deviant action by a stain on the perfect image he has beheld

A level of family integrity is a consolation, which Sy doesn’t have

What about Sy threatening his boss?

Sy is probably the saddest victim here

[Edit 8/21/14.]
 

I saw this film in the theater. I thought it was bit slight and truncated when I saw it then; but in reviewing it this past week—and I had considered doing it even before the death of Robin Williams—I am struck by a few things: it is a subtle, intelligent horror film whose details count to a high degree; it is a good example of Williams doing simple drama, and he turns out to be the most sympathetic character here; and, especially in style, it is a surprisingly derivative film, such as of such landmarks as Psycho (1960) and The Shining (1980)—but is still interesting despite its lack of originality (on a technical level).

Seymour (“Sy”) Parrish (Williams) is a quiet, conscientious, slightly obsessive photo-development worker in a drop-off facility in a large discount store, meant to echo Wal-Mart but called SaveMart. He seems to dote on favorite customers, such as the Yorkin family, whose young mother Nina (Connie Nielsen) usually comes in, typically with her son Jake (Dylan Smith). We eventually find, about 18 minutes into the film, that Sy is no ordinary photo-development worker: he has a huge trove of copies of photos of his customers—actually, primarily of the Yorkin family—on his living room wall in his anonymous, sparsely furnished apartment.

We thus have a story of a stalker; but of what sort, we might be uncertain, which keeps us hooked into the film with its well-handled suspense. I don’t want to give too much away, because I think it’s worth seeing for those new to it—even if the technology that is one of its subjects, the widespread consumer use and development of film-type snapshots, has (amazingly, to me) become outmoded. But this story could, today, be transmuted into something about Internet stalking, with maybe someone collecting an electronic trove of hundreds of photos from someone “dear’s” various online roosts (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

The film is very stylized, and it seems well planned by its writer/director—Mark Romanek, who has had a career in music videos (the color scheming, if nothing else, suggests this)—as a comment on materialistic, depersonalizing society (especially in the SaveMart store), as well as a comment on our society’s placing static image (and the associated sexiness/cuteness) above the more ambiguous, interrelated, and dynamic aspects of life. The craft with which this film is made helps make it worth seeing twice (which I did this month, and with my original viewing in, it would seem, 2002, that makes it three times, though I think that’s enough for me).

Appearances become deceiving about the main characters

And though Sy is presented, from almost the first shot (and from his periodic, calm narration that shows him to be something of a philosopher about his work), as a sort of amusement-stirring geek, with Williams’ hair cut short, thinning on top, and colored a sort of weird blond, Sy turns out to be—even while we wonder and worry what he will do under scary pressure—the most sympathetic character. This is not only because the worst violence he resorts to—which I think it OK to reveal—involves his wielding a hunting knife, while not even drawing blood with it; it’s also because the lonely, obsessive Sy—despite the well-tooled looks that people give to or about him, well depicting the social signs of alienation of this man—somehow earns our sympathy, and seems the most well-rounded person here emotionally, while the “lovely” family he devotes such attention to ends up seeming rather two-dimensional and less lovely than their photos might suggest —and while his less-pleasant, hard-ass boss (Gary Cole) seems pretty consistently the semi-stereotype he is.

In fact, what is funny—and is especially striking with Mrs. Yorkin, who often looks to us like a model (with weirdly “stylish” hair that looks it was lazily barretted up in the morning)—is that the snapshots of the family make them seem so artificially attractive and almost fake, that it would seem (from the director’s angle) that serenity is implied by their looking like models. But we find—again, probably per the director’s calculated intent—that they are rather emotionally shallow (except, in a sense, for the kid), and there is, of course, also a “dark secret” buried in the family’s life—an extramarital affair conducted by the slightly frumpy-looking husband.

A look at details shows the craftwork and influence

There are a number of Kubrickian touches in this film. The tracking shots, perhaps with a person framed geometrically in a receding hallway or the like, seem right out of The Shining, along with zooming shots, and a general way of presenting Sy in repose, like a nice/quiet version of Jack Torrance. What is more interesting here is the way director Romanek fashions, here and there, a refined social-cue way of setting off Sy, and showing where “normal” people stand regarding him and otherwise (which isn’t entirely to their credit).

On a more appealing, visceral level, the way a child can have an intuitive, trusting attitude more than “wised-up” adults is used with young son Jake, notably early in the film, when he reveals plaintively to his mother he’s sad for “someone” who doesn’t have any friends, etc., and his mother elicits from him that that person is Sy. Later, with Jake well involved with peers and coach on a sports field, and Sy more ominously seated (alone) in bleachers like a casual, cheering fan who’s just happened to stop by, Jake shows a more skepticism-tinged puzzlement at Sy.

(There is also a sort of Spielbergian touch, when the Yorkin parents are fighting—over money—and we find a one-person shot of Jake overhearing them, a little sadly.)

For a more adults-only measure of the subtle ways that “the presence of an eccentric” are handled, notice how Sy, when he meets up with Mrs. Yorkin at the mall food court, has a way of being aware of social boundaries, moving charily/shyly with his food tray, yet still skirting the social boundaries a bit by moving to be near her; and she is on the phone, and, courteous to him, curtails the conversation (by the way, I think she says something that reveals she might be suspicious of her husband having an affair, which Sy doesn’t seem to hear). She makes peaceable conversation with Sy, and they both acknowledge the coincidence of running into one another, even while Sy is more aware there is less than real coincidence than it seems.

All this stuff sets up a sense in us of, “What is Sy eventually going to do? Is he going to go postal?”

The film gives, overall, a rather shallow story, and to some extent is more an exercise in technique than something freighted with great social insights and themes. But, today, it does seem apropos, in terms of average people’s paranoia—such as about mass-shooters—being more “of the time,” which is an unfortunate development but still in need of ameliorating social recognition.

What makes this film especially interesting is that, as it turns out, Sy is less of a danger than the early building of suspense-via-character-actions may suggest. And we can infer from things we can see, once we know the score more, that part of the reason for Sy’s alienation, and the crises that erupt, is his position in society—a more global Gestalt, where how he is regarded, and accommodated (or not), helps create the problem that he ends up presenting, in his desperation, in more sensational fashion. We become less sympathetic to the Yorkins when we find that not only are they cheerful but shallow upscale types, who (to Sy’s quirky disillusionment) can have an extramarital affair like any other family, and their emotional life only gets richer when they confront an emergency, rather than just enjoy the “happy middle-class life” that is shown in their almost-too-idealized photos.

Sy is put into deviant action by a stain on the perfect image he has beheld

As I just hinted, the extramarital affair within the Yorkin family is such that it becomes an “inevitable trigger”: Sy has been fired by his boss for a laundry list of “infractions” that individually don’t seem like too big a deal (or, item by item, are things that could be mitigated if the boss really wanted to keep Sy on staff--except for, arguably, Sy's having made copies of a customer's photos for himself, which his boss doesn't fully know about). Then Sy is initially sent reeling into a bit of not-hard-to-understand instability by his firing. But then he coolly investigates and discovers the affair (partly by checking a photo on his living room wall), and then the conclusive discovery has a sort of shattering effect on him. But it also places him on track, with his steely self-control and canniness, to confront the ones having the affair.

It’s almost as if for the perfect family to be an apple of his eye with a bit of horrid rot inside it, he must chastise (or purge) the rot in no uncertain terms, as a way of restoring justice to the area of the world to which he’s become a loving witness.

One obvious irony, of course, is that, for Sy, this family that seemed so perfect in photos is not always perfect in action. But more notably and subtly, the adulterers (Mr. Yorkin and Maya Burson [Erin Daniels]), once Sy has “cornered” them, only really seem to have a rich emotional life when they (especially the dynamo of a company-owning father) are faced—in a rather helpless situation—with a stark threat of violence.

A level of family integrity is a consolation, which Sy doesn’t have

Another irony is that, as Sy seems hard to understand, even though (before the threat of violence just mentioned) Nina (Mrs.) Yorkin is tipped off about the adultery (by Sy), she still maintains some family harmony at dinner, showing the way family connections can provide a guideline, consolation, and bulwark against chaos even when there is a “snake” of wrongdoing in its midst. This consolation/bulwark is something Sy, sadly, doesn’t have in his life. Mrs. Yorkin even shows “how much she has in her family” by claiming in emergency-charged tones on the phone, during a moment of near-panic, that she knows her husband is screwing Maya Burson, but the other person on the phone should just try to get him on the phone anyway. So family connection trumps something ostensibly undermining it even there.

(Notice that this happens in a family that, today more than 10 years ago, many would decry as—in their looks and in their home—hopelessly shallow and as burnished and almost-unbelievable as a glossy layout in an upscale lifestyle magazine. The father is able to support what lifestyle they have from his owning, at a moderately young age, his own business—where the woman with whom he has the affair also works.)

But there is something a little fake about Nina Yorkin’s staunch tone here, as if it’s from a rather corny TV action movie.

What about Sy threatening his boss?

It’s a vignette that maybe takes the portrait of Sy a little darker than Romanek otherwise tends to provide overall, when—after having left his job on its last day—Sy takes a series of photos of his boss’s daughter (playing in her backyard), and like an early version of motion pictures—as the boss finds himself—when you flip through the photos quickly from front to back, you see an effect like someone is zooming in on the girl.

Today, if a parent got a set of photos like this, no one would blame him or her for calling the police. Why does Sy do this, when he seems decent enough so much of the time? One could suppose that maybe he wants to get caught once he has come to terms, per his own lights, with Will Yorkin and Maya Burson, but it’s unclear is this really is his motivation.

Sy is probably the saddest victim here

And we find late in the film—not to give away too much—that Sy is as obsessive, and photo-conscious, as he is because he himself, as he claims (we don’t see proof), has been subjected to abuse as a child involving photography by his father. Viewers should compare what he says to the main investigating police officer (Eriq La Salle) with what Sy subjected Mr. Yorkin and Maya Burson to in the hotel room.

And thus, Sy seems “totally gone weird” in the police interrogation room, which is sterile white, with his arraying before him, like a bunch of solitaire cards, photos he took at the hotel of the climax of the story, odd photos of random sights in his hotel room. This is something a little kid or an eccentric might do. But instead of seeming like the creeping-out Norman Bates at the end of Psycho, who is wrapped in a blanket in a police holding cell with his thoughts voiced in a Mrs. Bates old-woman’s manner, we actually feel for Sy in his own police-station anticlimax. He seems, to adapt a line from King Lear, “more sinned against than sinning.” This film ends up decrying not so much the depredations of a stalker in the form of Sy Parrish, as it does the victimization of a guy like Sy, not least by the image-conscious and depersonalizing nature of modern American society.

And what helped bring this off is Williams’ quiet, competent, winning acting.

Movie break (Summer Lite): Woody turns out Hollywood-acknowledging fare: The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001) and Hollywood Ending (2002)

My varied views on these also-rans is pretty much the opposite of Allen’s varied views, with one worth a look, the other not really

Second in a series: Post-9/11 Blues, Internet-infected Brave New World: A revisiting of 2001-10 pop (and political) culture

Also fits this series:

“We’ll always have Woody”: A look at Woody Allen films

Subsections below:

I. The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)
Allen regrets his performance here
A genre-type exercise combines tasty characters and some plot complexity drawn out of a fictional use of the real phenomenon of hypnotism
Theron adds some “humid sexual presence”

II. Hollywood Ending (2002)

A difference of opinion
Not that Allen claims this, but this film is NOT on a par—in intent or in effect—with his more autobio-seeming films, like Stardust Memories
Details nail the trouble with this film
Allen’s acting here is bad news
A road sign

[Edit 8/12/14. Edit 8/15/14. Edit 8/22/14.]

Starting with 2000-01, we are in a period of Woody Allen’s films where we encounter a lot more also-rans than otherwise. Also, viewing the films brings up a new, ironic issue: First of all, for the past six or so months—and I am grateful for this—I believe I have watched Allen films a greater number of times than in all the years I ever saw them before, from 1979 to 2013 (and the reason has, in good part, been to give a fair hearing to the films after having sidled into covering them on my blogs). If you figure I’ve looked at about 19 of his films already this year, and if you assume I’ve seen each three times or more, that’s 57 viewings. (And if you ask, does this mean I’m starting to tire of Allen’s mannerisms, repeated themes and pet phrasings of certain things, etc., well, there is some basis to agree with that.)

For those who think that movies in general are a frivolous way to pass time, or to have a basis for blog writing, or who (contrarily) might say my “film critic’s” role here is laudable or necessary enough, but that I ought to select my objects of criticism better, I would say this: You could definitely do worse than view the best of Woody Allen. It’s not for no reason that he’s respected as a major filmmaker (as various critics, except those more disposed to dismiss him, will imply). And in covering the best of his films through about 1999 as I have, and having devoted not as much time to his lesser works in this period, I think I’ve been judicious enough (and it’s been rewarding to go over the good ones again). And believe me, I have other directors’ works to cover; I don’t want him commandeering my time forever.

Starting in 2000, his films become more dispensable for even someone in my shoes. After his family crisis of 1992-93, one would suspect that some of the creative juice had gone out of him, due to presumed emotional trial from the crisis, or due to old age, or both. After his lawsuit with longtime friend and eight-year producer Jean Doumanian filed in 2001, one would suspect he was in a kind of trouble in other ways. Was his confidence more shaken (along with the ravages of age)? Was his getting distribution deals from whatever studios getting harder?

For 1999’s Sweet and Lowdown, he had distributing by Sony Pictures Classics. Starting with Small Time Crooks (2000), which was the last of his films with a production contribution by Doumanian, he had distribution by DreamWorks, and his association with DreamWorks, for distribution, would continue a few years into the new decade. By 2002, having DreamWorks as his distributor was perhaps reminding him of the compromises-cum-pressures of trying to please Hollywood executive mentalities.

In any event, for a retrospective critic viewing his films today, starting with Small Time Crooks—which I remember seeing in the theater as his first work that I’d seen in the theater in years, and which struck me as a small-potatoes work from him—a really good film from him gets increasingly rarer. There can be pleasures of some level in all of the later films, but the lesser qualities of the same make us feel that one viewing is enough. Even deciding which among this large number to view is a little tricky: it seems like a question of, intermixed with better works, what also-ran do we want to see (which would usually mean, for me, watching it at least twice to review it fairly)? We start to have the amusing thought that we should begin to take Allen’s own existentialist kind of one-liner advice: “Life’s too short…,” one of his characters might say; and we can finish this with, “—to spend it on too many Woody also-rans, or even to watch some of them more than once. And some even once.”

In the interest of respecting that life is short, I decided to skip Small Time Crooks for blog reviewing. I hadn’t originally wanted to cover Hollywood Ending, but it turned out useful to view, for reasons I give below (not all of which would sound encouraging to Allen).

I. The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)

I remember seeing this in the theater, and before this year, I believe I saw it at least once on DVD. When I re-viewed it again this summer, I felt I knew the way this story unfolded quite well. And as a thumbnail sketch, it seems quite promising: a sort of homage to a 1940-or-so film, and in the screwball-comedy genre, with fancily dressed sets (the Wikipedia article on Allen alone says it’s Allen’s most expensive production), and with a rather familiar sort of mystery shaping its plot, you would think this would be about as much fun as Allen’s period piece of about seven years before, Bullets Over Broadway (1994).

Allen regrets his performance here

Allen’s busy performance shows him seeming to be distracted at times, especially early on. Speaking on February 6, 2006, he considered Jade Scorpion maybe “the worst film I’ve made.” His comments are worth quoting at length:

I let down an exceptionally gifted cast. I had Helen Hunt [as Betty Ann Fitzgerald], who is a superb actress and comedienne. I had Dan Aykroyd [as Chris Magruder], who I always thought was just hilarious. I had David Ogden Stiers [as magician/crook Voltan Polgar], whom I’ve used many times and he always comes through. Elizabeth Berkley [as an office assistant] was wonderful. And it was successful abroad, not so successful here. […] It kills me to have a cast so gifted and not be able to come through for them. They put their trust in me.

[…]

I think I went wrong in playing the lead [C.W. Briggs]. I looked but I couldn’t find anyone else who was available who had any kind of comic flair. But I was not right in that picture. I would have been better off if I had less laughs and had a straighter, tougher leading man. So I think I sank everybody in that picture. And I felt it as I was seeing dailies every day. […] It was [a] period [piece] and I didn’t have a lot of money. I was dependent on locations that Santo [Loquasto, production designer] had made brilliantly but we couldn’t go back and shoot in them [again] because it would have been too expensive to redo his work. We couldn’t just simply say, “Let’s just get another actor and shoot it over.” [Which is the sort of thing he would have done back in 1988 for Crimes and Misdemeanors.] [Eric Lax, Conversations with Woody Allen (Knopf, 2007), p. 54.]

I’ll pause and note that I can understand his being dissatisfied with his performance. He seems a bit distracted and off his game at times, especially in the earliest scenes, while the insurance-office scenes are sumptuous with the set design and have numerous actors tastefully milling around. I can understand the production constraints, in his being unable to redo the sets and shoot again.

But aside from the flaws in his performance, I think Allen’s character here is OK for being comic throughout the film. In fact, I think that does a lot to make the movie humorous—that and Helen Hunt’s sharp performance (she only comes off not quite right when his script gives her one-liners that are a little too cumbersome for the ongoing repartee, though she trucks them out gamely enough).

On one hand, I can understand that, for younger viewers for whom Allen’s trademark persona starts to grate as he gets older and his films get less brilliant, his C.W. Briggs is an acquired taste at best. For myself, while his performance as the semi-nebbish, street-smart, wisecracking Briggs has its flaws, it isn’t too bad for that kind of character.

While often I seem in accord with Leonard Maltin on what he seems to embody as film standards that conform with what Baby Boomers hold as classics (though I would assume he has subcontracted reviewers who contribute to his compendium, whose views may diverge in taste among themselves at times), I differ with him on Jade Scorpion and the next, Hollywood Ending. He rates the later one higher than the earlier one, but I would reverse the ratings. I think that if you accept that Jade Scorpion is no more or less than an echo of 1940s (and late 1930s) screwball comedy (and gumshoe mysteries), it’s entertaining and generally effective enough in Allen’s vein. If his 2000s version of his persona is not some viewers’ cup of tea, for them this film will be that much less fun; but I think it is entertaining enough given its parameters, even if it is a bit shallow and not worth much more than two viewings within a given short period.

For me, Hollywood Ending is where his persona starts to really tire. The Videohound compendium really balks at this later film, not least for Allen’s personal style. I found Hollywood Ending less ambitious in terms of trying to ape a sort of Hollywood style—of course, while Jade Scorpion basks in period flavor, the latter is a modern-day “meta-Hollywood” piece—and the latter film’s script, as we’ll see, is fairly simple. And Allen, as it happens, is less distracted in the latter film than in Jade Scorpion. But in Hollywood Ending, he seems to try too hard as his “neurotic Jewish player” type; with his rush of words and hands chopping at the air when he is in beseeching mode or such, now he seems a not-fun parody of himself, all the more for his aged personal quality’s making what for him is a habitual type of performance more grating than ever, which would especially be the impression for younger viewers, I think.

A genre-type exercise combines tasty characters and some plot complexity drawn out of a fictional use of the real phenomenon of hypnotism

Jade Scorpion should be viewed as what it’s fairly obviously presented as: light entertainment that’s modeled on old screwball comedy. Allen plays C.W. Briggs, an investigator at a big New York insurance company who has an earthy and streetwise way of cracking cases (he has contacts on the street among blind beggars and toughs), who also is a bit seedy with his dating of a parade of women in his small apartment. Betty Ann Fitzgerald, played gamely and effectively by Helen Hunt, is a newly hired efficiency expert at Briggs’ company who instinctively takes a strong disliking to (with suspicion about) Briggs. This leads to verbal-wit sparks flying between them, which is most reminiscent of screwball comedy.

A boss at the company is Chris Magruder, played by Dan Aykroyd, who here looks a bit like a pudgy Richard Nixon and, I think, speaks a little too rapidly sometimes, but who is otherwise effective in his part. As it happens, Magruder and Fitzgerald have an extramarital affair going on between them—come on, this is Allen, and that sort of thing in his tales is almost inevitable—so there is a smarmy sort of clandestine “office politics” between these executives even while Fitzgerald, in her zeal to put the company on more competitive footing, is not above finding ways to prove Briggs obsolete.

Another big thread in the plot is what might turn some young viewers off: in celebration of an office worker’s birthday, the lot of the familiar faces at the insurance company go to a nightclub for a bash, where the main entertainment is a magician, Voltan Polgar, played by David Ogden Stiers (who was once on TV’s M*A*S*H and has worked for Allen before, including in Mighty Aphrodite). Polgar demonstrates his ability to put even the “volunteers” Briggs and Fitzgerald under hypnosis—and he persuades them in that state to be in love with one another, and gives them trigger words, a different one for each, at which they will snap into a trance into which they will be suggestible to the commands of a person (like Polgar) who knows what he’s doing with them. Hypnosis is actually real—I’ve seen it demonstrated (once, at my college GWU in about 1985), but it works only on people susceptible to it; it is also historically part of the reason for Sigmund Freud’s developing his theory of the unconscious, that people can show they operate mentally on a level below normal consciousness. All this aside, whether or not it’s true people hypnotized can be made to do what Briggs and Fitzgerald elaborately do throughout the film, it is this story’s premise that Polgar actually is a bigger manipulator—and crook—than he seemed in a mere entertainer’s role at the party.

Briggs and Fitzgerald retain their susceptibility to fall into their trance when each hears his or her specific trigger word, and Polgar phones one (and later the other) to instruct him or her to rob jewels from local homes of the rich. Briggs is especially a good target, since as an investigator for the insurance company with which the victims had contracted, he knows—in fact, helped install—the security systems of the homes he is then instructed to rob. Fitzgerald is later persuaded by Polgar to do his bidding similarly.

A side phenomenon of all this is that, especially for Fitzgerald, when she is in a Polgar-induced trance state, she also becomes—in line with having been made to be in love with Briggs at the office-mates party—enamored of Briggs when they happen to be together in various circumstances during their peregrinations. This leads to some amusing comedy where they can be apt to relate almost the complete opposite of how they normally are in the office (for instance, Fitzgerald trance-style besotted with him, and Briggs puzzled but sincerely caring).

If all this hypnosis stuff sounds “too stupid” to you, you probably won’t like this film. But if you give it some “willing suspension of disbelief,” the hypnosis angle makes the film entertaining. I was able to watch this film twice this season, after having seen it already at least twice in the past. It is a shallow work, but definitely amusing, and visually—the budget for production is to thank for this—it is appealing. Zhao Fei’s cinematography, first on display in Sweet and Lowdown, lightens the mood here. Some shots and transitions between shots are a little clumsy (e.g., not centered as well as they could be), but overall the camerawork isn’t bad.

Theron adds some “humid sexual presence”

Charlize Theron is on hand as a sort of sultry type ([correction] how Allen characterized her part in Lax, p. 157, is "screen humidity," without the link to Lauren Bacall--I'm unsure why I remembered it this way); she is Laura Kensington, the daughter of a wealthy family from whose home Briggs, under a trance, has robbed some jewels. In investigating at her home under his normal-life way of functioning as an insurance investigator, Briggs encounters her, and some unlikely sparks of mutual interest start up between them. Allen haters might see this as a preposterous, self-congratulatory method by which he presents himself as an “apple of a nubile young woman’s eye”—i.e., the sort of thing that for his detractors long ago got stale, if not distasteful, sometime after Allen had arguably first made it “hip” in his oeuvre in Manhattan (1979). However, those more sympathetic to Allen—and certainly his fans—will enjoy the exchanges Briggs and Kensington have, in view of their being taken as “acceptably ludicrous” in Allen’s world when he is doing farcical or parody work anyway.

As we find him doing here (and in variously mixed encounters in Hollywood Ending), a couple of instances of his repartee with a comely young woman is filmed with each shown, face-forward, in a single-person shot, understood as facing the other. Apparently in filming, Allen was unconfident enough in bringing off the performances if they were done in a two-shot, especially with minimal takes per shot, that he had each person filmed separately, so that a good series comprising the exchange could be assembled in editing. (This isn’t always done with Theron in this film.) The result in Jade Scorpion with Theron, who gamely portrays the rich vixen who seems undiscriminating enough to be sexually intrigued by Briggs, is what seems like Allen doing a try at Bob Hope–type repartee (elsewhere in the film his shoot-from-the-hip joking reminds you of Groucho Marx), with Allen’s humor seeming at times almost campy, yet no less fun for this.

If the exchange at Kensington’s mansion seems unlikely, the situation when Kensington turns up at his fleabag apartment, where ostensibly she is to have a hot date with him, complete with hard liquor, may strike some as over the top in plausibility, but can be rendered acceptable if you look at this film as a fun-time parody (and maybe you temporarily imagine Briggs being played by a similar comedian able to bring off the one-liners, maybe Billy Crystal). Of course, Allen deflates the preposterousness of the situation, reminding us of his story’s playful premises, when he gets a phone call, with Polgar on the line, setting him up to do another robbery, and Allen puts on a “po-faced”/dissociated yutz’s voice and curtails the hot date, so effective that he abruptly alienates Kensington, who’s quite ready to leave amid her baffled surprise, and with him quietly efficient as he prepares for his heist as if it were a banal errand.

##

Brian Markinson (I am uncertain about this Wikipedia article) plays an agreeable office colleague. Wallace Shawn, who has worked for Allen as far back as Manhattan, is here as a canny, mystery-solving coworker. The various actors seem generally right for parts that are stock sorts of parts for this kind of genre.

According to the film’s Wikipedia article, Jade Scorpion had a $26 million budget, and made $18.9 million at the box office.

By contrast, Hollywood Ending—one of whose production companies, according to its Wikipedia page, was the Kennedy/Marshall Company—had a $16 million budget, and made $14+ million at the box office.

II. Hollywood Ending (2002)

A difference of opinion

Allen at times, in Lax, shows himself not the best judge of his own work. Some of his judgments, which may vary from those of his more warmly receiving fans, may seem a little counterintuitive, or not their opinions. For myself—OK, I’ll agree with him (to some extent) that Annie Hall and Manhattan are not as sophisticated as later works like Husbands and Wives. I’ll concede a little bit that he put too much work into Crimes and Misdemeanors, as he says in Lax (pp. 123 and/or 288), though I think the fact he did, I think, means it has better aspects in its feeling out subtleties than it otherwise would have (if it only stuck to the straight drama, say).

But one opinion of Allen’s, I don’t think many will agree with at all, and I certainly don’t.

[T]o me, that’s [Hollywood Ending is] a very funny movie. It was one of my most successful ones in terms of an idea that was executed properly. […] I just thought it was such a funny idea and the whole thing came off and I played [in] it and it was well done. I think if people had gone to see it they would have enjoyed it. But they didn’t go to see it. [Lax, p. 226; said in about 2005]

Now we are entering a realm where Allen sounds like a benighted character in one of his satires. A theoretical “homeslice” type friend of his could have said, “Woody, man, the reason they ain’t goin’ to see this film is ’cause they read the reviews, and they heard the word of mouth, and they thought, ‘Do I want to pay good money to see another Woody movie this year? How good is it?’ and the reviews and their friends who saw it told them, Stay away. That’s why people didn’t go to see it.”

Allen makes some of the same points (as he did on Lax, p. 226) within a lengthy set of comments on pp. 55-56:

I thought it was quite funny. It is a funny picture with a funny idea, executed funny. I was amusing in it. […] Téa Leoni…looked great in the picture, was great…. I was so confident [that] I took that picture to Cannes, the first time I ever did that.  […] I went on opening night and felt, Oh, everybody’s going to love this and the French will particularly love it because the ending teases the French. And it was successful but nothing big—in France.

So the French were the ones most politely excusing?

This is almost good enough to put in an Allen script, if he did a really good satire about a film director who isn’t at all a good judge of his work.

The only statement I agree with in that last extract is his assessment of Leoni.

I wondered if I was unfair in my “reading” of it—after having seen it recently (on DVD) about 2+ times—when I read his remarks. But thinking it all over, I concluded, I’m right. This film is a turkey.

(Here’s a measure: a few days ago, I had a weird headache in the evening. I started watching this film for the third time, and with my headache just found the film too much to have patience for. I stopped it after about 17 minutes. A bit later, I went to Mighty Aphrodite on videotape, which I was partway through the fourth-or-so viewing of, and that was more like medicine for my headache. I hope to finish my review of it soon.)

Allen reveals numerous times in Lax that most of his films he doesn’t see again once he has seen them through to release. He thus comments on them (to Lax) from his memories of them when working on them, including in post-production. Maybe this film seemed to meet his desires better than usual, hence he thought it was especially effective. But to me, it is tired in general idea, it is often so mundane in execution that it can be rather tedious/embarrassing to watch, and Allen’s performance in particular is often like a coarse self-parody, so grating at times that it’s no wonder the Videohound review spews out a comment as if he/she is dead-tired of Allen’s persona.

First, a note on its general premises, to put you at ease….

Not that Allen claims this, but this film is NOT on a par—in intent or in effect—with his more autobio-seeming films, like Stardust Memories

One who was only casually interested in Allen, much less an anti-Allen movie viewer, might groan, “Oh, not another story ‘about professional Woody.’” No, this isn’t really another “meta-Woody” director’s kvetch that some might consider on the order of Stardust Memories or Deconstructing Harry. Stardust might have pleased us with its Fellini-esque verve (much helped by cinematographer Gordon Willis); Deconstructing Harry with its salty concerns might have been worth an intrigued fan’s look, even if it seemed a bit drily complicated.

But Hollywood Ending is simpler in story, and actually is interesting because—not really tracing a creative artist’s discontents or tortured relations with others—it shows a director coping (comically) on set, dealing with production details—and amateur “film-production mavens” like me might like it for showing a lot of filmmaking behind-the-scenes minutiae (even if some of it is stylized for effect). As far as what its profile of the director, Val Waxman (Allen), is about, it’s actually a sort of fantastic farce—with the director going temporarily blind while he is to start producing a film that is to save his career, all arranged by an ex-wife (Téa Leoni). If these premises seem like this should be a fun romp, actually, I found it to be rather patience-testing, a work whose basic premises seemed quite intriguing while the actual fleshing out of the story was rather dreary. And this pattern, I’m afraid, seems to characterize a lot of Allen’s films of the past 13 years or so.

Details nail the trouble with this film

Cinematography. One of the first things to note about this film—and I admit that not every detail I cite here will be considered condemning by everyone—is that visually it’s rather unusual for him, compared to all his post–Carlo Di Palma works. The cinematographer here is Wedigo von Schultzendorff (if you speak German, which I barely do, he has a German Wikipedia biography), a European whom Allen got on someone’s recommendation after Haskell Wexler started working on this film, and was dismissed for being too demanding (while he was nice enough) (Lax, pp. 226-27). Von Schultzendorff is competent enough, but the film has a look between Di Palma’s slightly muted look and Zhao Fei’s more lit look; the result is a kind of TV-show quality. Add to this the fact that some shots—not only in “on set” scenarios, but usually there—are prettied up with background lights and rather pure colors, like “production values on the cheap” à la a sort of Christmas-light effect, and the result is a sort of anonymously decorated look that I don’t associate with Allen, but which might be considered germane to a film about rather-synthetic Hollywood values.

Story set-up. The story in some ways is almost too preposterous. Allen as Val Waxman, a storied film director who needs a come-back (even the name Val Waxman sounds like a parody of Allen’s typically Jewish, short-named heroes), and we initially find him relegated to filming a TV commercial for deodorant in a cartoonish rendering of Canada, complete with blizzard and Allen buried in a heavy parka. Back in the States, he’s met at the door by his live-in girlfriend Lori (an aspiring actress, already with work on the stage), played by Debra Messing (yes, I’ll go along with Allen haters who think this pairing is too preposterous, especially with Messing’s vapid-ditz manner in this role), and Waxman explains he’s quit because he was fired, and what better reason to quit? The one-liners, when they don’t work—and often they don’t in this film—are like that.

Leoni plays his ex-wife, Ellie, who is on the Hollywood producing echelon, and has a boyfriend, film producer Hal Yager, played by Treat Williams, who works for a studio called Galaxie. They have a film idea, for something whose script is titled The City that Never Sleeps. There is a rather tedious opening scene among producers, who want a good director for this film, and Ellie suggests her ex Waxman, he’d be great for this…. There is grumbling about Waxman. George Hamilton plays another producer on hand, looking as he often does like a model for a haberdashery (Coppola had him, to profit, in The Godfather Part III [1990]). Hamilton is given one-liners (by Allen as writer) of a tired sort, such as to issue a crushing summary of Waxman, but to quickly buffer this with “with all due respect” or “not that there’s anything wrong with that” (more or less). These lines fall dully like fishing ballast, not that that’s Hamilton’s fault.

Marriage issues. There is the requisite Allen “back story” or “undergirding” of marital troubles; Ellie early on assures her colleagues, “I can handle him [Waxman]; …I just got tired of having to all the time.” Waxman, for his part, on finding, or otherwise apropos of, Ellie wanting him to direct the Never Sleeps picture, remarks that she probably feels guilty…. (Much later in the film, Ellie mouths a typical Allen line, that “inertia accounts for two-thirds of the marriages in America,” with Waxman rejoining that love accounts for the other third.)

Insider details, and good side-character acting, add spice, amid desultory doings. Waxman gets the assignment, with help from his agent Al Hack, played by Mark Rydell, seeming a bit in appearance like 60 Minutes’ old producer Don Hewitt. Rydell and Leoni have two of the best-played parts in this film, but—as happens with other lesser fare of his—Allen’s having actors give splendid performances in middling or poor material is like seeing a skilled swimmer do her remarkable thing in a dirty pool.

The film takes about 40 minutes to get to the point where, in a better Allen work, the story might break for more riotous comedy. Here, rather perfunctory scenes and desultory pacing show Waxman being lined up to do this big-budget ($60 mill) film with a theme supposedly close to his heart, when on the cusp of starting, he suddenly goes psychosomatically blind. Then, circumstances forcing it, he has to direct the film blind.

(It’s often interesting seeing actors who hit it bigger later in films turn up in bit parts in Allen films. Here, Fred Melamed is in a brief scene as a production assistant; he is Sy Ableman in the Coens’ A Serious Man [2009].)

Possibilities with female-oriented comedy come in with Waxman having arranged, despite her limited acting chops, his girlfriend Lori to be featured in the film. The way the film sets its absurdism up, and includes such details as with lesser-talent Lori, would seem to be in the vein of Bullets Over Broadway, but it doesn’t work too well here. Whereas Bullets may have had some not-entirely-desired quiet spots amid its more genuinely well-turned craft in plot and multi-person scenes, this film seems more consistently labored, at least for its first half.

There is a practical stratagem that is mildly amusing: Waxman’s cinematographer, who speaks only Chinese, has a translator, and this man is persuaded to be Waxman’s assistant, guiding him around the set and giving him feedback on the filming work, to cover up Waxman’s blindness (this situation actually was inspired to a degree by Allen’s fruitful association with his three-film cinematographer Zhao Fei, who also didn’t speak much or any English).

But this contrivance preludes something that adds to the marital preposterousness in the story: after the translator is removed from helping Waxman due to a more typical production-related change in personnel, Waxman ends up arranging for ex-wife Ellie to be his cover-up cohort and assistant on set. This is after, of course, he has explained to her his blindness predicament and the consequent ruse.

If all this sounds like this film is too fantastic in some ways, and synthetic in others, to make for genuinely good satire, you’re right.

With a potential to add good comic moments, and not quite bringing them home as such an element might in A+ Allen, Jodie Markell plays Andrea Ford, a reporter for a big-name New York magazine who is doing “nonfiction narrative” coverage of the production as it unfolds. This leads to a comic moment where Waxman—tricked, as we find, by her perfume to think she was Ellie—inadvertently reveals his big ruse, when he is talking about a dream (which in its telling reveals the blindness situation), not realizing his listener is really Andrea. Andrea then gets a gasping look of surprised recognition of the facts, and moves quietly away.

Allen’s acting here is bad news

What Videohound screamed about, and what really complicates your feelings about Allen here, wherever you usually stand, is his often-strained performance. If you love him (or don’t mind him) as his usual persona, here you feel embarrassed at his performance; haters will have a field day noting this as when he proves to be an unbearable hack, who they feel ought to trod off peacefully to the happy hunting ground for Catskills has-beens. Especially in scenes once he’s turned blind, not least in the first major scene, he seems like such a degraded version of himself—with hectoring tone, cloddishly emphasizing hands, and almost ridiculously clipped r’s—that he seems like someone doing an imitation of Allen that is meant to be caricaturing, and still not getting it right. If good imitation shows some respect and admiration for the source, here Allen sounds like he can’t even imitate himself as if he loves himself.

An earlier scene in a restaurant where he is meeting with Ellie, where he slides abruptly between peaceable professional consultation and spontaneously spouting out angry criticisms for her taking up with producer Hal Yager, makes its comic premises clear. But it seems to go on too long and Allen, with his pseudo-acting calisthenics, starts to wear on our patience with his third or fourth slip into tearing into Hal Yager.

Scenes where tasteful music might be good touches—and Allen in other work seems so often to hit the mark, with his old jazz records whose fitness might make younger viewers overlook how old the music is—are sometimes underscored here with banal dreck. A bedroom scene with music including strings and trumpet seems like a crappy score was used that had third-rate Chinatown-type music.

Allen’s hardened issue with rock ’n’ roll comes out when he visits an estranged son, who has an arch-punk (1980s-style) look, and who has changed his name to Scumbag X. (Amusingly, his son surmises that his dad is psychosomatically blind almost the instant Waxman comes in the door.)

At some point, Allen in his tired, straining voice can’t understand how or why his son, who is in a rock band, plays the drums “loud.” News flash: I’ve never been in a rock band, nor played the drums, but I know enough about rock music to say that the thing about drums is, they inherently aren’t loud unless a listener is right next to them; they typically have to be miked up. Amplification, as for many other instruments, is what makes them “loud.” The music as a whole, more properly speaking, is what can be loud, and if you don’t like this, sit way in the back of the theater, stadium, or wherever, or (better yet) wait for the concert album to come out. Allen sounds like he was 70 in 1975 when he makes comments like this.

A situation rather late in the film where Waxman is being taught how to negotiate walking in a room that in the near future is to have film execs, so he can get to the right furniture without revealing he’s blind, is rather tedious, and helped by discretionary editing. It’s the sort of thing that Peter Sellers would have had a ball with. Here, the routine seems tired.

Waxman’s sight suddenly comes back when he is seated in Central Park (in a pretty shot) with Ellie. This is scored to what sounds like sappy (or imitation) Gershwin.

The plot rounds off when Hal Yager wonders if Ellie had fallen back in love with  Waxman, and Ellie confesses she thought she never really stopped loving him.

A kiss Waxman gets from Ellie just before they ride off in a car might disgust the Allen haters who feel his casting partnerships with pretty actresses is worse than self-congratulatory and atrocious, and leaves us (aside from the sexual issues) wondering: if this film was meant to deliver a lot of ironies about Hollywood, why didn’t it work better? It so often seemed tired and not quite clearing the creative pole-vaulting bar. If its tiredness was part of the point, even this didn’t seem to work as it should.

A strange effort from Allen, all the stranger for his thinking (in Lax) it worked so well. If one wanted to do a feature-length parody of “a typical Allen movie”—which I would be warm to, with all respect for him—one could almost sample from some of his clunkers, but I have a feeling this clunker has too much deadwood to use for a good parody.

A road sign

Hollywood Ending is probably not the worst Allen would do. But unfortunately in the new millennium, Allen’s not being “the man for the new hour” seemed to flow forward in this film, undeniably.

Whether his lawsuit against Doumanian (2001-02) was sapping his creative enthusiasm in making this film, in some ways he would sink lower with his next outing, Anything Else (2003). This latter, in 2002, was actually in production (with him findable on a New York street during shooting) while the lawsuit was wrapping up. I could actually be very sympathetic to Allen if his anxiety (or whatever) tied to the lawsuit helps explains his boring performances in Hollywood Ending and Anything Else. It would help explain, though it might not allow us to like the films better.

His strategic move to the closer, cozier story of the next film makes us speculate—whether or not he shared this view—that he vaguely suspected that his performance (both as actor and director) in Hollywood was as if he was paddling around preposterously like a quacking wooden duck, and thus he had the intuitive good sense to break for more promising pastures, to aim for a golden homecoming, and see if he could reconstitute the old glorious, two-person chemistry and bittersweet story arc of his audience-favorite NYC-centric romance films (like Annie Hall and Manhattan). (This maybe was coupled with by his reflection on the meaning of the 9/11 attacks to shape the new film.)

If he tried to aim for what should have been a golden egg, the result was, after his long, prolific career, one of the stinkiest egg-farts he would produce.

Next: Film check: Woody's (occasional) self-parody still has charms: Anything Else (2003)