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Woody Allen - Blog Posts
I got reminded of the movie Mighty Aphrodite today.
And, like, how did we ever think Woody Allen was okay?
It's about a man, played by Woody ofc, who adopted a son and wants to meet the kid's birthmother (Mira Sorvino) to find out what she's like in case the kid wants to meet her when he's older. Sounds okay so far, right?
BUT! It turns out that she's a sex worker. She's a prostitute and she's done porn in the past. Well that's just not acceptable to poor flustered Woody. He worms his way into her life, without letting her know who he is, so that he can save her from such a terrible lifestyle. Iirc she's actually pretty happy and isn't struggling. Not that her happiness or quality of life anything to do with his motivations - he just doesn't the woman who birthed his son to be involved in sex work.
So yeah, lies to her constantly to get involved in her life. He decides that she needs to quit sex work and get herself a husband. So he sets her up with....some dude. Some dude who has obvious anger problems and a clear hatred of women. He then lies to the dude about her career and convinces her to lie as well because no respectable man wants to be involved with a prostitute.
The dude beats her up after seeing her in a porn film he was watching with his buddies. Because it's totally fine for him to consume the content, but absolutely wrong of her to create it. He then leaves her. He's not treated like a villain btw. If anything, the movie seems to think she was in the wrong.
After this, Woody finally decides that he has no business meddling in her life like this and takes off. Doesn't cop to who he is or what he did or anything, but he at least left her alone.
And then the movie ends with them running into each other like two years later. And he still lies to her. And it turns out that she married a pilot that she met because of him, had a baby, and now she's a stay at home mother. Her life is all sunshine and roses now thanks to Woody Allen deciding to be her savior. Everything he did was good actually because she's a tradwife now.
I...just...how do we let men tell on themselves this much and then hand out Oscars for it??
Midnight in Paris (2011)
"Yeah, I ... I forgot my mantra."
The proverbial Goldblum.
(See also: The proverbial Walken.)
Why is Woody Allen trending y’all got my hopes up that the man was brutally murdered for NOTHING
Illustration Portrait of Woody Allen
@woodyallenweb @woodyallenhangingoutwithpeople @woodyallenfilms-blog @brwnpaperbag
Materials: plasticine, colored paper, quilling paper
An Essay on Café Society
Woody Allen’s most recent film, Café Society, has been probably the season’s most anticipated piece in a few circles, as the old writer-director has unceasingly uphold his reputation in the past several years. He had many exceedingly and a few hardly memorable movies in his line of annual releases. This year’s film is simultaneously a worthy continuation and a surprising departure from the latest trend in the Woody Allen factory.
In numerous respects it’s a classical piece with all the usual themes: urban life, particularly the praise of New York; disillusionment; the overall pointlessness of life; being a Jew in America; neurosis and neurotics; unfulfilled love, and jazz. In some ways these were easily identifiable and fresh but at the same time they seemed to be somewhat rushed and stale--it is almost impossible to describe it without contradictions.
In this period piece we get to follow the life of a Jewish New York family and their several exploits. In the focal point there is a young, neurotic Jessie Eisenberg, who looks and acts quite similarly to the young Woody Allen. He falls in love with an unsuccessful, unspoiled Hollywood debutante, even has a chance at a short romance with her but his influential, wealthy and well-loved uncle takes the girl. As the protagonist returns to his hometown, he finds solace in high social life and a nicely growing success as a bar manager. The movie ends without many great twists and turns, with a few bitter moments of the once-lover couple meeting but never chancing at starting again together.
I think it’s unnecessary to go into details concerning the family, the why’s and how’s, as the real treasure that this film is is hidden somewhere else.
In the context of the last twenty years of Woody Allen movies he has arguably been creating more of essays than solid works. The characteristics of his films have been changing, from the surreal reality to more subtle ways. The incomplete list of his themes above is very well-known among the people who have seen at least three or four of his works and there seems to be a will to find a perfect body for a Woody Allen film. Evidently experimentation with tone, color, period, narrative tools and much more have been defining the writer-director’s approach to his work.
Firstly, the tone is now balanced and masterful. With Match Point, and Irrational Man he has gone down the path paved by Dostoevsky. The dark brutality that he has tried to grasp in humanity has been so refined now that he probably felt it burdensome to emphasize its graveness and made it as frivolous as is fit to someone, who grew up on classical film noires. But also the romantic and neurotic air, so typical, has been refined into a cynical calmness, beyond even the point of “I can only laugh”. We have all seen the disillusionment of Woody Allen but it seems the energetic overtone is now smoothing out, which is a good thing, since the things to replace it are subtlety, mastery and unpretended grandeur.
As regards the color and period of this film I must say this is the closest I have seen to perfection. Obviously these work as great reassurances to the subject matter of the movie but there is also an important subtle depth to them. His most successful attempts at these two have been Irrational Man and Midnight in Paris. The former with its rosy color foreshadowing violence, the latter being half-set in the most resonant period of American history. In some respect Café Society is an adaptation of The Great Gatsby, dwarfing Baz Luhrman’s--in comparison--cheap attempt. In the titular film several moments are highlighted and tainted with a golden shade--something not similar but identical to Fitzgerald’s work. At first it seems to underline the high hopes and dreams of the likable protagonist and it then gradually flowers into the color of death and decay, more and more disappearing from Jessie Eisenberg’s scenes and more and more coloring death around him. In the beginning he is hopeful, he is made golden but what it symbolizes loses meaning and moves into external things, for example originally he feels this golden color and loves a brunette, then in the end feels nothing close to that but his wife has golden hair. The period of the film is also evocative of The Great Gatsby: one will feel both a romantic feeling for that specific time and a detachment because of the overhanging horror.
In To Rome with Love we have seen a contemporary, yet clear narrative with multiple storielines to follow, hardly ever intersecting each other, connected mainly by the place but not limited by anything. Now Café Society is far more conservative but clearly shows the understanding that the creator has obtained through a daring project. It is subtle, it is a lot but it is enough--according to this blogger. Here it is the family members that create multiple dimensions, although they are pointing toward a final intersection inside our protagonist. To me it’s these simultaneously running stories that create the oh-so-familiar feeling of neurosis in Café Society.
A nowadays often looked-down-upon tool has been utilized in the film: voice-over. However there is nothing to be despised about it, since it is no more than semblance that it served the function of exposition--in fact it is subtle but continuous cynicism, magnified only by the past experiences with Woody Allen films. It speaks a language known only to the adepts but to them it speaks it quite comprehensibly.
Even the casting of this film is subtly outstanding. We have several savvy choices of returning actors from past Woody Allen movies, like our old Hemingway as the brute of the family, or pseudo-neurotic Jessie Eisenberg. What I think is the greatest decision with regards to the actors is Steve Carell, who is Italian enough to play a Jew--a joke a little too much on the nose...
Overall this film is one more step in the direction of at least my ideal of a Woody Allen film. It has so numerous merits, it looks so subtle, expensive, real and beautiful that I won’t stop praising it in a reasonable space of time.
Guardare un film di Allen è sempre un' esperienza piacevole, anche quando sei consapevole che le sue ultime opere non sono all'altezza dei suoi vecchi capolavori.
In Coup de chance ti lasci trasportare in questa bellissima e affascinante Parigi autunnale che fa da sfondo alla storia d'amore tra Fanny, una donna sposata con uno stronzo riccone e Alain, uno scrittore squattrinato che incontra casualmente dopo tanti anni. Tra intrighi, inganni, sensi di colpa e scherzi imprevedibili del destino il film scorre via che è una meraviglia, ricordandomi a tratti Match Point, anche se decisamente meno amaro e cupo.
Un colpo di fortuna - Coup de chance (Woody Allen, 2023)
Shelley Duvall & Woody Allen as Pam & Alvy Singer in:
Annie Hall (1977) by Woody Allen
Costumes by Ruth Morley
Cinematography by Gordon Willis
Map of Woody Allen films in the New York Locations