Folks:
I went to see Blue Jasmine, the latest Woody Allen movie, the other night. One friend fell asleep. The other said “The more time that passes since I saw it the less I like it.”
None of the women in the movie seem to have close female friends. The main character spends all of her energy spending money on luxury brands or trying to find a (second) rich guy to live off. The male characters are pretty shallow and usually sleazy (cheating on wives) as well though at least some of them have buddies. None of the guys would be an argument against Vladimir Putin’s recent op-ed pointing out that Americans in general are not exceptionally bright or wise. The research for the movie seems to have been weak. A Sunday afternoon party in San Francisco has everyone wearing jackets and ties (maybe some Bay Area folks who travel in higher social circles can comment on that, but even the wealthier folks out there don’t seem to dress up on weekends during the daytime).
Arguably an interesting part of the movie would be the descent into madness of the main character, the wife of a Wall Street swindler, but we see only before (uber-materialist out shopping) and after (uber-materialist broke and crazy).
Who wants to defend this movie, which has received very favorable reviews, as a work of genius?
[p.s. My favorite Woody Allen movie is the 1989 Crimes and Misdemeanors]
You liked it more than I did.
go see SALINGER
Neither myself or my wife liked it, but I thought Cate Blanchett did a nice job.
My favourite Woody Allen is also Crimes & Misdemeanors, and I liked Blue Jasmine quite a lot. My spouse liked it and thought that of all of Allen’s movies, it’s the one whose dialogue seems most natural, not a line out of place.
What I liked was the theme of re-invention — and people’s desire to, inability to, etc. Woody Allen seems to be asking whether we can ever reinvent ourselves, change, co-create our own stories, move beyond them, or are we just doomed to be trapped in them? Which is something he works with in most of his more serious movies, I think.
Another common Allen theme is cerebral/controlled vs. emotional/uncontrolled, which is very much evident and explored in Crimes & Misdemeanors, too. For me, watching Hal tell Jasmine to “calm down” over and over, so they could talk rationally about his affairs and his plan to leave her, was harrowing. Like watching Arthur do the same to Eve in Allen’s “Interiors,” when he leaves her, and the way the family looks with disdain at good old dressed-in-red-while-everyone-else-wears-neutrals Pearl (Maureen Stapleton) in the same film, and in Crimes and Misdemeanors, the contrast particularly strong between Judah and his girlfriend, Dolores, whom he kills because, essentially, she’s too emotional, too clingy, wants him too much, can’t live without him, is inconveniently raw and passionate.
Anyway, I thought there was a lot to Blue Jasmine. I don’t think we’re necessarily meant to like the characters. Hard to think of any to like in C&M, either.
I agree that the San Francisco elements of the film were way off and distracting but I did enjoy watching a fine cast doing excellent work, especially Blanchett. I also enjoyed Woody’s dialogue and the whole riff on Streetcar Named Desire. Mainly though I enjoyed not seeing a buffed out actor in a cape defying all sorts of physical logic, wreaking all sorts of violent havoc with all sorts of weaponry. 😉
I was thrown by the New York accents in the San Francisco characters. They all felt like classic New York types, who I rarely saw in any part of San Francisco. I imagine the casting was done in NY. The casting selection is S.F. is slim by comparison and I doubt he cared to cast it in L.A.
The contrast in endings between Blue Jasmine and Street Car Named Desire, where the Blanche DuBois was institutionalized vs homeless was very apt for San Francisco, given it’s large mentally ill homeless population. I imagine this was an intentional contrast given how closely he stuck to the original elsewhere in the picture.
Well, if Woody Allen is bringing NYC values with him, certainly the characters are going to be formally dressed.
My experience is that if you’re a technologist who is somewhat interested in business you can get away without a suit and a tie in most cities in the US.
In NYC however, if you’re the only guy in the room wearing just a (good) button-down shirt (i.e. Brooks Brothers) and a (good) pair of jeans, you can feel mighty uncomfortable, so I always take a suit when I got to NYC. You might as well if you have spend $300 a night for the hotel.
Well…. I’m not sure that even the most positive reviewers would argue that this is a work of genius; but I do think they’d uniformly agree, as do I, that this is a solidly entertaining film, with a sterling cast, and as a work of art surpasses 95% of what’s coming out of Hollywood (or whereever it is that mass-distributed films are emanating from these days).
I agree with Molly (above) that Allen craftfully touches upon many timely, and timeless, issues including not only re-invention, but also: class, money, family, adultery, technology, parenting, addiction, careerism, stereotyping, greed, the Madoffs, and dentistry.
I also savored some of the comedic moments: Blanchett emotionally unloading on her nephews in the Chuck E Cheese, or some of Louis CK’s tragi-comic moments, or Chili’s friend.
And what’s not to like about the Streetcar Named Desire undercurrent?
Unlike my friend who saw the film, I didn’t have much of a problem with, for example, the repeated chance encounters upon which the story relies, because ultimately life is all about chance encounteres… this movie just distills them. And I’d argue that Blanchett’s character had close friends in NYC; she doesn’t have any in SF because she’s a transplant.
I’ll accept that some aspects of the film aren’t grounded in reality… but I’m willing to accept them.
Lastly, and perhaps what I most cherished about this film is that Allen ended it the way he did. Too often cinema seizes upon mental illness as something that leads to, or accompanies, eccentric genius. Much too rarely does it show the more accurate representation: it’s almost purely a curse. It’s a person sitting on a bench talking to themselves, having lost all connections to family friends and material comforts.
Life is all too often messy as this film very safely and successfully reminds us.