Eighth 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:
As a character study, rather disappointing
The young-female element is more wackily amusing than potentially
scandalous
Other aspects: New York
locale, the issue of meaning, Clarkson’s light, Boris’s good night
For Allen fans, worth a look.
For those casually interested in Allen, a possible disappointment. For Allen
haters, red meat.
This was Woody Allen’s first film made in the U.S. after the four he’d
done in Europe starting with Match Point
(2005), which was filmed in summer 2004. (Whatever Works is also given financial help from the distribution/sales firm Wild Bunch, which helped with his previous two
films.) WW is noted as based on, or
derived from, a script he’d written in the 1970s (Videohound suggests this, but I also seem to recall hearing about
that when it came out), and its jokes of a broad and rather uproarious sort are
like his work of that time (though, as a whole, this script is second-rate
compared to his best work of the time).
To a large extent WW is a culture-clash story, trading in
part on the philosophic dichotomy between an atheistic, scientific New Yorker
and a Southern family that had had fundamentalist religious sensibilities (this
is shucked off, for different reasons by
the different members) and a cartoonish naivete. WW was derided, at least by some, as third-rate Woody when it came
out, and Larry David’s part—which some
took, I think, as a bald substitute for what would have been Allen’s part—seems
like a concentrated version of Allenesque pessimism and smart-mouthing. But I
found the film better than I might have expected—I laughed several times (as I
didn’t do this with the previous Vicky
Cristina Barcelona [2008])—and it doesn’t cause (at least for me) the
wincing-or-forgiving-amusement spurred by occasional lapses into self-parody
that Anything Else (2003) does. But
it’s still a comedown within the string of films Allen has done since about
2001.
I think it could be considered a
self-conscious/self-distilling work of Allen’s, not quite the self-parody of
the 2003 film, but definitely best taken in by Allen fans, maybe worth a look
(but risky) for casual Allen followers, and definitely evoking a loud raspberry
from Allen haters. (End note 1.)
As a character study, rather disappointing
I think the worst feature of
this film is David’s part, which apparently marketing types would have felt
would sell this film to young audiences (or they thought the presence of David
would, if not the part). To me, his part is a static, noisemaking cardboard
cutout.
David plays Boris Yelnikov [sp?],
a self-failed (so to speak) physics professor, who didn’t quite get a Nobel
Prize he was nominated for for his work in quantum mechanics. He now lives a
sort of retiring, bohemian life in Manhattan, jawboning with friends at
streetside cafes and teaching kids chess (and insulting them—none too subtly—if
they didn’t meet his standards). There are regular remarks by various
characters, including the credulous echoing by a young female, as if the man is
a genius; but to me, the larger picture makes him look like a crackpot who
incurs the “gracious decorating” of his dung-pile life with the flower of the
assessment of “genius.”
As a whole, Boris doesn’t really
entertain me (after the first watch); or I should say that his character “as a
person” is a bore. Some of his acerbic remarks still elicit laughs after the
first watching due to the relentless attack of David’s smart mouth, his
sustained moxie, with the late-night-TV flavor of the shtick.
But aside from the comedy, what
is this character supposed to be about? Self-absorption (not as if of Allen) that seems extreme even for an
Allen film? Is he a variation on (not only Allen’s mechanism) the “last sane
man”? To me, Boris is a bitter self-induced failure who might redeem himself at
times with humor and interesting insights, but sometimes he sounds like a
two-dimensional sort that is hackneyed even by late-night-TV standards. (A more
mature Allen would have taken some of the same spiel and made the person into
an obvious focus of satire. Is that, by the way, what Allen is doing here?)
As I suggested, David—who, as
the solo figure pictured on the DVD, must have seemed a good marketing angle
for this film, from his famed work on TV’s Curb
Your Enthusiasm (where I believe he appeared on camera), and Seinfeld earlier (where he was co-writer
behind the scenes).
It turns out that Allen’s
post-2001 films sometimes seem to hearken back—whether intentionally, I don’t
know—to some of his most popular older films, the way late Rolling Stones songs
might recall songs from their 1968-72 height. So, for instance, Anything Else had quite a few echoes of Annie Hall (1977) (in a way that lovers
of the older film might want to disaffiliate from it). Whatever Works seems to echo Manhattan
(1979), but in a narrow and not entirely helpful way. (And as I hope to come to
soon, Allen’s next, 2010 film seems to echo, a bit, Hannah and Her Sisters [1986].)
The thing that makes the beloved
Manhattan perhaps most arresting in
its story, especially for today’s viewers (not least those not enamored of Allen), is the relationship between Isaac Davis
(Allen) and a 17-year-old student, Tracy (Mariel Hemingway). (See my review of Manhattan
here for details.) Interestingly, among
what makes Manhattan look thinner as
a story today—while of course its photography and its detail-level reflection
of concerns of its times mark it as a good cultural artifact of its era—is that
Isaac Davis seems to learn a little something, as an “epiphany,” in what passes
for his odyssey in the story (the character of Yale is another male there who
“has to learn”); but this epiphany seems to amount to little more than, as
Tracy tells him near the very end, he needs to trust people more. This is
definitely a smaller story of self-discovery than Allen’s Alvy Singer undergoes
in Annie Hall.
Well, Whatever Works seems to take this very small story idea—which
seemed to thinly work in Manhattan—and
run with it in 2009. Boris starts to get a little more health to his emotional
life by taking up with—indeed, marrying—Melody; but with this coat-hanger of a
story idea, the film is fleshed out with two-dimensional character depiction,
sophomoric concepts, and humor that might tickle our funny bone in a pinch, but
ultimately leaves us feeling that this was a 1970s story, second-rate by Allen
standards, that should have stayed in his steamer trunk. For instance, in Manhattan, the philosophic look, in
passing, at the dark wonders of the universe—amid which, per Allen, love is a
tiny, hopeful flicker—that was related in the planetarium scene gives way to,
in Whatever Works, Boris’s doled-out passing
remarks that even cynical young crazies in their first year of college wouldn’t
utter without eliciting rolling eyes from peers. (A more pointed exchange near
the end of Manhattan, with Isaac
upbraiding Yale about his needing to act with more honor, next to a skeleton of
an ancient ape, also doesn’t have improved correlates in WW.)
That is, David delivers the
character’s steady stream of pessimistic philosophic pronouncements, jaundiced
social comments, insults (his use of cretin
is pretty liberal), and the like in a way that seems like a willing parody
Allen might do of his late-1970s characters’ less-nice moments (it also seems
like a more earnestly embraced, and potentially tiresome, distillation of same).
The net result is a hacking out of bilious comments like a nasty cat spewing a
train of hairballs, the content of which not-rarely can make us laugh—sometimes
despite ourselves—as we can enjoy at the hand of an opinion-monster who is the
proverbial stopped clock that is right for a moment twice a day. (End note 2)
In the annals of creative
literature, Boris may be helpfully compared to the character of Joy, who
renamed herself Hulga, in the Flannery O’Connor story “Good Country People.” Hulga
comes from a rural Southern family, and gotten (out of the local area, I
believe) an advanced education (in philosophy), and now, partly crippled, makes
the most of her potential for indicating a sort of intellectually arch
viewpoint coupled with proto-self-pity with her artificial leg. This leads her
not only to have an ugly new name but, I think consciously, to maximize the
ugly sounds her artificial leg can make when she walks around the house.
The young-female element is more wackily amusing than potentially
scandalous
In WW, ending up on Boris’s doorstep is a young female in a soiled school-logo
coat, a Southern-raised runaway named Melody St. Ann Celestine (the name is
about as smart, by today’s standards, as focusing on terms of debate, as the
script does, like “secular humanism,” which hasn’t really been relevant since
Jerry Falwell was riding high 30 years
ago). Boris grudgingly takes her in. There are humorous clash-moments related
to cultural background and to Boris’s supposed vaunted intelligence compared to
her naïve simplicity. The two eventually get married. A year passes, as
narrated, and more plot developments ensue, particularly when Melody’s parents
turn up on her doorstep in a true coincidental style that is among the things that
mark this script as a sort of episode of a Norman Lear show, just high-tech in a movie way.
It’s a measure of this situation
that Evan Rachel Wood, as Melody, presents
the only acting job worth watching here. It’s interesting seeing her almost
seamlessly deliver a character that fits the premises of the story, as if she
felt that good acting counted for Allen. Wood, like a mini–Meryl Streep, is
notable in her emotional range (and, when apropos, accents) in Thirteen (2003) (where she first came to
big notice in movies), and later works like The
King of California (2007), Across the
Universe (2007) (here she even sings), and The Wrestler (2008), among other films. Apropos of Whatever Works, Wood even commented at
some point around 2009 that the film was “old-school” Allen, or such, and that
she was surprised that, during production, Allen allowed her only to do a few
takes, and she apparently concluded from watching the film that he was really
going after a natural/artless sort of acting style.
Actually, she needn’t worry; I
think her acting is fine here. Usually, the adequate performances Allen gets
from actors are good enough; it’s the writing that really commands what is
sought in his work, and no one actor need go to Meryl Streep lengths, usually,
to bring home what is valuable in the story.
When you find yourself admiring,
in Wood, the sheer acting effort being put into a part that Allen haters would
say is the prime focus of what makes this film objectionable, then you know you
have (as Allen has written it) a weird film. But I think people are missing the
point if they feel that the May–December romance here is what centrally marks
this film as a true stinker.
Wood manages—even with
occasional stupid sex-related lines she has—to give her role enough of an
artless sweetness that it tends to dispel some of the unseemliness that her
position in the drama might have in the eyes of some. Lest you feel this is
another Allen story that, quite hinkily, has a much-too-old-for-her man
coupling with a much-too-young-for-him woman, I think what saves this film from
that assessment is that the pairing is so ridiculous, because the comedy is
broad enough and just wacky, that we are more taken up with the culture-clash
stuff; and some of the jokes are resonant enough in their broad way that they
tend to clear the air in this film of “tacky sexual-inadvisableness,” or
however you want to phrase it.
Other aspects: New York
locale, the issue of meaning, Clarkson’s light, Boris’s good night
The return to New York. This is a sort of
return-to-New York for Allen that has him re-partnered with his old colleague
Santo Loquasto for set design, and
familiar street scenes—and even mini-scenes peppered with Allen’s favorite rooty-toot
ragtime-type music, culled from his apparent Greenwich Village–derived records.
As a result, the film has the potential of being seen as another gross
self-parody (if not self-indulgence), on the order of Anything Else. But I don’t think it comes across that badly.
The theme of Allen’s “faith.”
The question of Allen’s religious questions—yes, what I would call what others
would dismiss as his tic-like atheism—is one feature of this film that leads me
to group it with his following offering, You
Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010). This latter film I am also viewing
and am actually more eager to write on in some depth than I am on Whatever Works. Both films—actually, a
lot of Allen’s work does this—address the theme of love coming grace-like into
the life of someone who otherwise, especially due to advancing age, is dealing
with the frightful prospect of the end of life, and/or the aspect of
“meaninglessness and violence” in the universe (the sort of thing Boris,
clangingly, remarks on). It is almost by
coincidence that these films seem “of a piece” in doing this, not only
because they were apparently written many years apart. Whatever Works is pretty sophomoric in how it handles this theme;
the 2010 film, despite its also-ran qualities, is more subtle, judicious, and
“for adults” than the former film, and how it is this way, I am eager to turn to. (Actually, if Allen is aiming
to pillory fundamentalist types in WW,
I think Boris’s stock pessimism sounds about as cartoonish, so you wonder
whether the film had best be regarded as a satire of anyone who thinks in very
dogmatic terms, whether affirming God or not.)
Other main performances. As
another measure of Whatever Works,
Patricia Clarkson turns up on Boris’s
doorstep as Melody’s mom—effusive with the likes of ‘thank goodness, [she] has
found her’—Clarkson who does a sensitive turn in Allen’s immediately previous
film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
(2008). Clarkson, of course, is almost hammy here, as the script requires, but
still adds some amount of sophistication to her role.
When Ed Begley, Jr., finally appears as Melody’s fundamentalist dad,
he is even more of a two-dimensional character. It’s typical of this film that
before long at all, he is revealing that his issue regarding sex is that he’s
really gay, and he reveals this to a man, also gay, in a New York bar. So the
two will become a couple. (This wouldn’t be out of place in TV’s 2 Broke Girls.)
Clarkson, incidentally, who has
a long career in indie pictures (as is her reputation, apparently), and who
appeared in The Station Agent (2003;
reviewed by me in early 2012 on this blog), is Sadie Burke (I think the name
is) in All the King’s Men (2006), a
film starring Sean Penn as an ambitious politician in Robert Penn Warren’s
novel, modeled on Louisiana’s 1930s governor Huey Long. Interestingly, in a
cast in the 2006 film that even has James Gandolfini as a Deep Southerner,
Clarkson sounds the least as if from Louisiana (while other actors may be
hamming it up a bit with the accents)—yet Louisiana is where she’s from in real
life. I viewed King’s Men this summer
and considered doing a review, but held off.
Boris “falls for” someone new.
Boris finds true love when, for the second time in his life, he jumps out the
window (the first time explains the stagy limp David gives him). He lands on a
woman on the sidewalk below, who ends up taking a fancy to him, and, well…in a
brief story-edited transition, he is with his new wife, and there is a homey
New Year’s celebration at film’s end.
Presto—a note of hope at the end
of a pessimism-drenched film.
##
Tasteful cinematography is by
Harris Savides, another production worker
new to Allen. He died in 2012, I find.
End note 1.
Depending on the level of
sophistication on which one considers a film, some might dismiss WW as nihilistic trash—you know, along
the lines of “Allen seems to say ‘whatever works’ is all right, hence if
marrying someone half your age is your bag, go with it.” But to me this is roughly
the same sort of unappreciative criticism as those make of John Lennon’s song “Whatever
Gets You Through the Night” (1974), as if all that was about was embracing any old thing as if there are no
values. Lennon’s song, from what he said in some interview, took off from some
snippet of the exhortation of a preacher he saw once on TV (he was big on
getting inspiration from the fizz and flash of TV); and given his solo work’s
focus on issues of despair central to the individual, usually with an eye to
authenticity in life, his song could be considered a look at dealing with late-night
despair, though as it happens, he makes it into an ironically bright-sounding
clarion call of sorts, with the rousing vocals including harmonies from Elton
John. This means a mash-up of tones, of course, but it is not all simply an embrace
of godless hedonism. Somewhat similarly, Allen’s Whatever Works—with the title phrase repeated a little too often in
the script—could be considered to have a philosophy of stoic pragmatism, not
totally-devoid-of-values narcissism.
End note 2.
By the way, I may sound, with
this point, as if my hypothetical ID card that affirms I “live in the New York
metropolitan area” should be revoked, but I can’t say much with precision about
David in terms of what all he’s done, or how good he is; I’ve certainly read a
fair amount about him and his two main shows, just mentioned. But I never
watched (except for a snippet, I think) Curb
Your Enthusiasm, and I only watched one episode of Seinfeld. Seeing him in this film, I can affirm he fits out the part
of the sour-mouth/canny New Yorker well enough, and I can see how he fits the
taste of today’s “hip-oisie” the way Allen did about 30-35 years ago, though
Allen was younger then than David is now. But aside from this, I can’t say much
more than that his acting chops here appeal, or not, based on whether you find
his character amusing, which I can imagine swaths of the U.S. not doing.
