Review: Blue Jasmine (2013)

* * *
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins, Bobby Canavale, Alec Baldwin

A Streetcar Named Desire by way of the Bernie Madoff scandal by way of Woody Allen. The story beats are familiar, but nothing can take away from the bravura performance by Cate Blanchett at the film's centre. As a woman already beyond the verge of a mental breakdown, she delivers a fascinating, sometimes terrifying, performance that can easily be considered one of the best Allen has ever captured, and a formidable contender for this year's Best Actress statue. The film around her isn't quite as strong as it could be, but Blanchett's performance is so mesmerizing that it very nearly makes up for the unevenness of the other elements.

Review: To Rome with Love (2012)

* *
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Alec Baldwin, Penelope Cruz, Roberto Benigni, Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Woody Allen

The problem with the current phase of Woody Allen’s career is that when you sit down to watch his latest, you never know if you’re going to get a Midnight in Paris or a Whatever Works. While To Rome with Love is nowhere near as aggressively terrible as the latter of those, it has a frustratingly half-baked feeling to it that seriously detracts from whatever genuine pleasures the film can be said to contain. Basically: great cast and great scenery, but both utterly wasted.

Review: Midnight In Paris (2011)

* * * 1/2
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Owen Wilson, Marion Cotillard

These days, when Woody Allen is off, he tends to be way off. Fortunately, every once in a while, he's capable of being right on target and it's the fact that for every couple of clunkers there's a Vicky Cristina Barcelona or a Match Point that keeps us coming back. Midnight in Paris is one of his winners, a charming, magic realist comedy that just might be his best film since 1999's Sweet and Lowdown.

Review: Match Point (2005)

* * * 1/2
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer, Matthew Goode

"You have to learn to push the guilt under the rug and move on, otherwise it overwhelms you." Match Point is a meditation on morality, an examination of how far a person might go in an effort at self-preservation. It has the strange distinction of being the Woody Allen film most unlike other Woody Allen films, while at the same time borrowing quite heavily from one of his most celebrated films (Crimes and Misdemeanors). At the time of its release Allen called it his best film - I think that's an epic overstatement, though a case could definitely be made that it's his best movie of the last ten years.

Review: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010)

* *
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Gemma Jones

About midway through Woody Allen’s You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, I realized what the problem was: every element of this film is just a watered down version of something from one of Allen’s better films. So, by all means, save yourself the trouble and just watch one of his better films instead of this one, which ends up being little more than a demonstration of how to completely waste a cast of incredibly talented actors.

The Best Picture Countdown #50: Annie Hall (1977)

Note: this post has been modified from a previously published post

Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton

“A nervous romance.” It might just be the most accurate tagline a film ever had, perfectly summing up not only the relationship between Alvy (Woody Allen) and Annie (Diane Keaton), but also the on-screen persona of Woody Allen. This is an unusual romantic comedy, running counter to many of the conventions of the genre. It’s self-aware and self-reflexive, it’s non-linear and, most importantly, it ends with the couple apart. What Allen gives us is not a fairytale about why love works, but a deconstruction of the ways that sometimes love doesn’t work.

It begins with Alvy telling us that “‘I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.’ That’s the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women.” It’s most certainly true of his relationship with Annie, the end of which he is lamenting as the film opens. We see the entire relationship play out, from their first meeting and the fun, getting-to-know-you days, to the impasse point where the relationship is either going to become serious or isn’t, which is when Alvy begins to get nervous. He loves Annie (“I lurve you, I loave you, I luff you”) but doesn’t want to make the commitment, although he tries to keep her from realizing it. She moves in with him, then realizes that he didn’t really want her to move in with him. He deflects his own neuroses by making her self-conscious, encouraging her to take adult education classes and start therapy. However, these two things only serve to make the relationship more unstable because she becomes more assertive, less malleable and he begins to lose his grip on her. They break up, they get back together and, eventually, break up again. In a lot of ways, they’re perfect for each other (this fact is apparent in a scene between Alvy and another woman in which he attempts to recreate the experience of cooking lobster with Annie, to less than stellar results), but she’s still discovering who she is as a person while he already knows who he is, and so they become less compatible as the relationship progresses.

Allen wholly eliminates the fourth wall, making us more confidante than audience. He directly addresses us several times, imploring us to back him up. He breaks down the barrier between the characters and the story by having them wander into flashbacks and fantasy sequences, observe them as they’re going on and comment on how they’re going. He makes reference to the way this film is structured, telling us at the beginning that his mind tends to jump all over the place (as the story will in terms of chronology), and making the first time we see Alvy and Annie together a scene from the middle of their relationship. They’re going to a movie but find out when they’re buying tickets that it has already started. Alvy is distraught and calls it off, reminding Annie that he can’t start a movie in the middle.

But even without its self-reflexivity, this is still a film that can be set apart from other romantic comedies in terms of tone and characterization. Allen perfectly captures the awkwardness of trying to have a conversation with someone you just met when Alvy and Annie carry on a conversation about photography while subtitles show us what they're really thinking; and he’s effective at showing how Alvy pulls Annie closer with one hand, while keeping her at arm’s length with the other, usually using passive-aggressive humour to mask what he’s doing (“Whose idea was it?” he asks with regards to her moving in after she accuses him of thinking she’s trying to trap him. “Mine,” she says. “But I approved it immediately.”). The characters are nicely layered, with humanity and intelligence sandwiched between various neuroses. Annie, as played by Diane Keaton, has become a touchstone for female characters in comedies, although the “Annie Hall type” has mutated through the years, retaining the fidgets and foot-in-mouth moments but losing much of the intelligence and charm. Keaton is perfect as Annie, which in a sense is a shame because she’s a great actress but has sort of become stuck in this persona, still playing variations on this character today, although now the character usually comes in the form of a meddling mother.

It goes without saying that this is a very funny movie, the funniest parts coming when it moves out of its New York locale to Los Angeles, where Allen mercilessly satirizes Hollywood. He has a friend who drives around in his convertible with a special hood in order to keep his skin youthful. He goes to a party where the guests only talk about arranging meetings (“He gives good meeting,” one says to another with admiration), and one (played by Jeff Goldbloom) makes a phone call in order to be reminded of what his mantra is. Allen’s feelings on the soullessness of Los Angeles in general, but Hollywood specifically (“They give out awards for everything. Adolf Hitler, Best Dictator”) are obvious, but nonetheless funny, just as his love for New York is obvious but nonetheless touching, and it’s telling that the city is so adoringly framed given that Annie – now gone Hollywood – tells him that he’s the human equivalent of New York. This film, which reverberates with touches of autobiography, is perhaps just one giant exercise in mental masturbation (“Don’t knock it,” Alvy tells Annie, “it’s sex with someone I love”) on Allen’s part, but what can I say? I’m a sucker for his brand of self-deprecating narcissism.

Friday's Top 5... Woody Allen Movies

#5: Bullets Over Broadway
Bullets Over Broadway is a curiously underrated film, I've found. And yet it's one of Allen's snappiest and, frankly, funniest films. It would be worth seeing for Dianne Wiest's performance alone but there are also great turns from Jennifer Tilly, Chazz Palminteri and John Cusack.


#4: Hannah and Her Sisters
A terrific drama about three sisters and one of many examples of Allen's ability to consistently craft interesting, complex female characters. It also features one of my favourite moments from any of Allen's films, when Hannah realizes that her husband and her sister, Lee, have been having an affair. It's a terrific and very subtle moment but it has great power.


#3: The Purple Rose of Cairo
I've written about my love for The Purple Rose of Cairo many times so I'm not really sure what else I could possibly say about it other than to simply reiterate that I love it.


#2: Manhattan
Allen's love letter to the city where so many of his films are set is many things - brilliantly acted, perfectly written, beautifully filmed - but first and foremost it's his strongest effort as a visual stylist.


#1: Annie Hall
Perfect from beginning to end, Annie Hall is not just his best film, it's one of the very best films ever made.

Great Last Scenes: Manhattan

Year: 1979
Director: Woody Allen
Great Because...: It's one of those "out of the mouths of babes" situations that really puts the rest of the story into perspective. In a movie full of people with very intellectual pursuits, you don't really expect the smartest person to end up being a high school student. Her sincere appraisal of the situation as the movie closes, however, is sweet and perhaps the most truthful thing said in the entire film.

Like most of Woody Allen's films, Manhattan is about relationships - romantic relationships, friendships, the intricacies of social maneuvering and co-existing amongst other people. Basically, there are two couples: Isaac and Tracy, and Yale and Mary. Isaac's relationship with Tracy is problematic because she's only 17 (at one point he marvels about how he's older than her father); Yale's relationship with Mary is problematic because he's married. After breaking things off with Mary, Yale gently steers her and Isaac together, resulting in Isaac breaking things off with Tracy. After Isaac and Mary have gotten together, however, the lingering feelings between Yale and Mary bubble up to the surface again. Yale wants Mary back and Isaac, after losing Mary, longs once again for Tracy.

Isaac, Yale and Mary are all undeniably smart people and yet when it comes to conducting their relationships, it's almost like they're still in high school. When Yale informs Isaac that he wants Mary back, his argument literally boils down to "I saw her first." The three of them spend a lot of time intellectualizing what's going on, but ultimately none of them is particularly mature about it. So Mary goes back to Yale and Isaac, having stewed on it for a while, decides that he wants Tracy back, which brings the film to its final, brilliant scene.

Isaac rushes to Tracy, who he finds preparing to leave to spend six months studying in London. When they were together he encouraged her to go, perhaps because her doing so would make it easier for him to slip out of the relationship. Now that he wants her back he asks her to stay. It's a stunning display of selfishness that really undercuts Isaac's claim that he broke things off with Tracy because she wasn't mature enough. Undercutting it further is Tracy's reply to his request: "What's six months if we still love each other?" and, the film's final line, "You have to have a little faith in people."

There's a lot that Tracy doesn't know (at 17 she is still just a kid) but in this final scene she shows that she is easily the most emotionally mature character in the entire film. She may not know much about life yet, but she at least has the advantage of knowing herself and that gives her the ability to have faith in others. Isaac's expression as the scene closes seems to say a number of things simultaneously: he gets what she's saying, he's surprised by her insight, he's surprised by his inability to manipulate her to his will, and he thinks it's naive to believe in the good intentions of other people. He is himself an unreliable person when it comes to relationships so how could he possibly have faith in someone else?

The best films make you wonder what happened to the characters after the credits. I can't help but wonder what ever became of Isaac and Tracy.

Review: Sweet and Lowdown (1999)

* * * *
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Sean Penn, Samantha Morton, Uma Thurman

I’ve been a Woody Allen fan for a while and I’ve seen some of his best films and some of his more dreadful pieces, but somehow I’d missed out on Sweet and Lowdown until recently. My loss because while I was giving movies like Anything Else a chance, I missed out on this delightful film and the extraordinary performances contained within courtesy of Sean Penn and Samantha Morton. This isn’t just good Woody Allen, this is Woody Allen at the very top of his game.

The film is constructed by incorporating documentary conventions into its story, ostensibly the true (well, truish) story of Emmet Ray (Sean Penn), who was once the second best guitar player in the world. Woody Allen appears alongside other experts and historians in interview segments disbursed throughout the film in an attempt to get at the man behind the legend, telling anecdotes of varying believability, including one story involving a hold-up at a gas station that is told three different ways. The only thing that isn’t really in dispute is that Ray was a genius and underappreciated in his own time.

A few facts, just to get them out of the way: Ray idolized Django Reinhardt – the best jazz guitarist in the world – and couldn’t be near him without fainting; if he showed up for a gig at all, he usually showed up drunk; he was briefly married to a dilettante novelist named Blanche (Uma Thurman, who makes her entrance into the film as if she’s auditioning for a Marlene Dietrich biopic); and he had an obsession with watching trains and shooting rats down at the dump. All of this, while supplying amusing moments in the story, are secondary to Ray’s relationship with a mute laundress named Hattie (Samantha Morton). Although he treats her badly, repaying her unconditional affection with meanness, infidelity and mocking of her muteness, not to mention simply disappearing on her one night, she is ultimately the glue that holds him together.

The relationship between Ray and Hattie is inspired by the relationship in Fellini’s La Strada, though it leans more to the comedic than the tragic, at least up until the very end. Despite the great difference in tone between the two films, Ray’s final moments on screen – which find him sad and broken with the too-late realization of what he had and lost – are as moving as the final moments of Fellini’s Zampano. Although Ray is indisputably selfish and occasionally even cruel, Penn provides him with enough humanity that you can still feel for him even while knowing that he’s gotten exactly what he deserves. Penn is also able to blend Ray’s brilliance in one respect (as a musician) with his buffoonery in nearly every other respect without making the character seem inconsistent. Ray is a man who knows that he’s great at this one thing but never really feels secure about it because he’s not certain that everyone else knows he’s great, too. He is, in his way, more vulnerable than Hattie, which is perhaps what draws her to him and then keeps her there long after most women would have left. As with Penn, Morton is terrific in the role, suggesting the inspiration of Fellini’s story without allowing Hattie to become simply an imitation of Gelsomina. Her performance is a thing of absolute beauty and the impression she leaves is remarkable given that she never utters a single word.

Allen’s mix of fact (Django Reinhardt) and fiction (Ray) and his joining of “talking head” segments with traditional narrative segments works really well in this film. Allen’s obvious enthusiasm for the subject matter, being a well-known jazz fan and musician himself, also helps immeasurably. Though he is inarguably a great writer and director, it is also difficult to argue that every once in a while he puts out a film that seems to simply go through the motions and in the last 15 years, or so, those less than great films have outnumbered those worth remembering. Sweet and Lowdown is one of Allen’s great films, totally deserving of being ranked alongside such films as Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Hannah and Her Sisters.

Great Last Scenes: The Purple Rose of Cairo

Year: 1985
Director: Woody Allen
Great Because...: It's emotionally shattering, but it achieves this effect in the most gentle of ways. In a worldless scene Mia Farrow sits down in a theatre and watches an Astaire/Rogers movie, devastated by her most recent loss but slowly carried away by the magic of the film. Will things seem bleak once the lights go up? Sure, but for a little while at least she's allowed to find peace.

Cecilia has a rough life. She's a waitress whose husband either gambles away her paycheck or spends it on other women. She can't leave him because as bad as things are at home, her options if she leaves seem limited to prostitution. Her only escape from the bad things are movies, which she attends almost religiously. One film in particular - The Purple Rose of Cairo - becomes a favourite, her attendance so regular that even Tom Baxter, the film's main character, notices and feels compelled to climb down off the screen to meet her.

Eventually Cecilia is forced to choose between the fantasy represented by Tom and the reality represented by Gil Shepherd, the actor who plays him. Though she's enjoyed her time with Tom and knows that he's the "perfect" man - kind, dependable, faithful - she also knows that he's limited personality-wise, stuck within the narrow borders constructed by the writers of his film. Gil, on the other hand, is a real person just like herself, though at the same time he isn't just like her because he's a movie star. Star struck, Cecilia chooses Gil only to learn the hard way that being a real person means that he's capable of disappointing her.

Cecilia has packed her bags to move to Hollywood with Gil, only to discover that he's left without her, abandoning her to a life of uncertainty and hardship. The Purple Rose of Cairo has just left the theater, replaced with Top Hat. With nowhere else to go Cecilia goes into the theater and as she watches Fred Astaire singing "Cheek to Cheek" to Ginger Rogers, her face transforms into something that is not quite happiness, not quite sadness. It's a beautiful, perfect moment, capturing both the agony and the ecstacy of the audience's relationship to the art of film.

Review: Whatever Works (2009)

* *
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson

Whatever Works, Woody Allen's latest addition to his oevre, is at best a mildly amusing film and at worst a waste of the assembled talent. The story was originally conceived decades ago and shelved following the death of Zero Mostel, for whom it was written. Having three decades and change to smooth out the creases should have made this a strong effort, but it just never really gets off the ground. This isn't the worst Woody Allen film of the last ten years but as even the most ardent Allen fan would have to admit, that isn't saying a lot.

The obligatory Woody character here is Boris Yellnikoff (Larry David), an angrier and more aggressive alter ego than usual, but one who is no less neurotic than the others. Boris is a self-proclaimed genius who was once almost nominated for a Nobel Prize, is divorced from a woman with whom he was "perfect on paper," and hates pretty much everything. His philosophy of life is that one should do whatever works in order to be happy. By the time it comes to the end, the film will have offered up a number of non-traditional and, to greater and lesser degrees, less societally acceptable relationships to demonstrate that principle, which is itself another way of saying "the heart wants what it wants," Allen's famous (infamous?) explanation of his relationship with Soon-Yi Previn.

Boris meets Melodie, a teenage runaway from Mississippi played by Evan Rachel Wood, who nails the spirit of the character but falters when it comes to the accent. Melodie moves in with Boris, platonically at first, and slowly erodes his resolve to not get romatically involved with her. They marry and get into a comfortable routine which is disrupted first by Melodie's mother (Patricia Clarkson) and later by her father (Ed Begley, Jr.), both of whom disapprove of the relationship.

Whatever Works has been called "vintage" Allen by some and though it is reminiscent of Annie Hall in that it consistently breaks the fourth wall, allowing Boris to directly address the audience, that is where the similarities end. The dialogue is crisp but the story itself feels half-baked and so do many of the characters. Melodie and her parents, in particular, are little more than charicatures of right-wing, ultra-religious Southerners and targets this broad should be beneath a writter as intelligent and clever as Allen can be. These characters don't feel real and neither do their relationships and since the story is about relationships, that makes it all seem just a little pointless.

While there is much about this film that doesn't really work, it isn't a total failure. It certainly has moments that are inspired, some great lines scattered here and there, and the combination of Woody Allen and Larry David is great. Hopefully the two will work together again but with stronger material.

Review: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

* * * 1/2
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Scarlett Johnansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz

There’s something comforting to me about those familiar white on black titles that begin every Woody Allen film. Seeing them, I know that I’m about to enter a world where the people (most of them, anyway) speak intelligently, have interesting ideas, and prove that you can be the smartest person in the world but still be a complete idiot when it comes to relationships. Sometimes – especially lately – the promise contained in those opening titles is disappointed and sometimes it is not. Vicky Cristina Barcelona is perhaps not destined to become a classic like Annie Hall or Manhattan, but I still walked out of it very happy.

Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Christina (Scarlett Johnasson) are two Americans spending the summer in Barcelona. Vicky, who is engaged, is working on her Master’s thesis about Catalan culture and Christina is more or less just along for the ride. They meet a painter named Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) who invites them to spend the weekend with him. Vicky is appalled by his forwardness, but Christina is intrigued and talks her into accepting his offer. After an evening of wine and oysters, Christina falls ill, leaving Vicky and Juan Antonio to their own devices, which results in them spending the night together. Later, after guilt has caused Vicky to retreat back into her studies, Juan Antonio and Christina pick up where they left off. Soon, however, another woman moves into the picture to disrupt the harmony of their relationship – Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz), Juan Antonio’s ex-wife.

The story plays out as a series of couplings and uncouplings, simultaneous couplings and unrequited couplings. When he first encounters Vicky and Christina, Juan Antonio explains to them that life is meaningless, love fleeting, that the moment and the moment alone is worth living for. The film itself seems to follow this philosophy, as various characters find themselves dissatisfied in their relationships and flirting with the possibility of beginning new ones, only to find something lacking in these new relationships as well. If there is any one message in the film, I suppose it’s that there’s no such thing as perfect, lasting happiness, and that all things are transitory.

The performances in the film are uniformly good and reminded me of something which I often find myself thinking after seeing a Woody Allen film, which is that of all directors working today, I think he’s the most consistently great at directing women and giving them interesting characters to play. Christina is a dilettante who has adopted the role of the “free spirit” with all its inherent clichés, but ultimately doesn’t really know herself yet, and Johansson plays all these notes to perfection. Maria Elena is a tempestuous artist who perhaps plays up that tempestuousness because she’s an artist and it’s expected of her, and when Cruz enters the fray the polite energy of the film changes completely and new dimensions are given to the story. Vicky is the kind of woman who will (almost) always do exactly what is expected of her because, as she herself admits, she lacks the courage to be more like Christina. As Vicky, Hall was the biggest surprise for me – Cruz has been getting the lion’s share of the attention for the film, but Hall is just as worthy, making her character, who might simply have been the shrill stick in the mud, effortlessly relatable and likeable.

I enjoyed Vicky Cristina Barcelona a great deal, though I concede that it isn’t a masterpiece. There is a narrator who intrudes throughout to tie the details together, which has the effect of making this the cinematic equivalent of a particularly well-written summer beach read. It’s light and breezy, easily consumed and not especially challenging, but the perfect complement to a lazy summer day.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Manhattan (1979)

Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Mariel Hemmingway, Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep

Manhattan is probably the most technically ambitious of all Woody Allen’s films. While many of his films have the flavour of being “writer’s” movies, this is distinctly a director’s movie, which is ironic given that the central character is a writer. None of this is to say that Manhattan isn’t as sharp or cleverly written as other Woody Allen classics – because it is – just that it attempts, and succeeds, at achieving more as a film.

Allen is Isaac Davis, a writer whose serious work has been pushed aside by his work writing for television, whose ex-wife Jill (Meryl Streep) is now a lesbian and writing a tell-all about their relationship, who is dating Tracy (Mariel Hemmingway), a high school student who is way too young and far too mature for him, and who develops a relationship with Mary (Diane Keaton), the mistress of his best friend Yale (Michael Murphy). He negotiates these relationships with the neuroses and fears of commitment typical to most of Allen’s male characters, especially those played by himself. He wants Tracy until he meets Mary and then, losing Mary, decides that he wants Tracy again, and is forever unsettled by the fact that Jill left him for another woman. In a nutshell, that’s the story, but the story itself is really secondary.

What the film is about is the city itself. It opens with Isaac dictating the opening of his novel, describing Manhattan in terms to relate it to his protagonist. This plays out over a marvellous montage of shots of the city beautifully photographed in black-and-white. The city is filtered through loving eyes, brushing away any ugliness that may have existed on the streets of Manhattan in 1979 (a fact which Allen fully admits, but argued, “Other directors romanticize their hometowns – look at Fellini with Rome – and no one complains, so why should I be pilloried for showing New York in a good light?”) so that you have an unfettered view of a city that is really gorgeous in its design. When Isaac and Mary sit on a bench looking at the Brooklyn Bridge and he sighs, saying, “I love this city,” it’s hard not to feel the same way.

But the film’s technical prowess isn’t limited to photographing the city, it’s also evident in the way that Isaac’s relationships are framed as they carry on within the city. There are two scenes in particular. One takes place between Isaac and Mary as they walk through an observatory during a rainstorm and it’s shot to make it look like they’re floating through the vast darkness of space. The other is between Isaac and Tracy in his apartment, which is drenched in darkness save for one spot of light, where Tracy is sitting. It’s as if she’s the sole space of illumination in his life, although he’s too blind to see it. From a purely technical standpoint, these are the two most beautiful sequences Allen has ever shot.

The chemistry between Allen and Keaton is as evident here as it was in Annie Hall, although it feels more transient, perhaps because the relationship between Isaac and Mary is given as much time as that of Mary and Yale, who will eventually get back together. The first time I saw the film, I was surprised to realize that Isaac and Mary weren’t the story’s central couple, but that it was Isaac and Tracy, who seem like they ought to be the fleeting romance. The casting of Mariel Hemmingway is brilliant on a visual level because of the way she towers over Allen, making her really obvious where, due to their age difference, she ought to be someone others try not to notice – at least not too closely (on their first meeting, Mary asks Tracy what she does. “I go to high school,” Tracy replies, ushering in a brief but awkward silence). Just like in the scene where she sits in the one spot of light, when they walk down the street together, you can’t help but notice her. And the role is supremely well acted, mixing just the right levels of maturity and immaturity. Tracy is smart and certainly mature enough to be in a relationship with Isaac (which isn’t really saying that much), but she is ultimately still a kid, as evidenced in their break up scene, which concludes with her saying, “Now I don’t feel so good,” while drinking a milkshake.

But despite that, Tracy is in certain respects the most adult of all the characters because she’s the only one who possesses real self-awareness and the ability to act selflessly. Yale strings Mary along because he can’t bring himself to leave his wife, then pushes Isaac to get involved with Mary to alleviate his guilt, then leaves his wife and takes Mary back from Isaac. Mary spends most of her time with Yale lamenting the fact that they’re having an affair but not being able to break it off. Isaac dumps Tracy for Mary then loses Mary and races back to Tracy in order to stop her from going to Europe, fully admitting to her that he’s doing something inconceivably selfish. The film’s final words belong to Tracy, who tells Isaac that sometimes you just have to have faith in people, and then the camera cuts to Isaac who looks as if he’s just heard something that is both obvious and revelatory. Has he learned his lesson? We can’t be sure. All we know is that life will go on in that big, lustrous city he loves so dearly.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels

Mia Farrow has never been nominated for an Oscar, a fact which I find astounding every time I watch The Purple Rose of Cairo. In just one look at the end of the film, she conveys a universe of emotion, expressing both the agony and the ecstasy involved in watching - and loving - movies. This is a wonderfully funny and heartbreaking fantasy film from Woody Allen in which his satirical edge, his brilliantly constructed dialogue, and a light touch of drama come together to form the backbone of a story that only gets more rewarding with each viewing.

The film takes place during the Depression and stars Farrow as Cecilia, a waitress who goes to movies to escape her dreary life with her unemployed, adulterous husband Monk (Danny Aiello). She lights up when she talks about movies – and movie stars, for that matter, so familiar with their “real” lives that she’s able to offer carefully considered opinions on why one relationship failed and another succeeded – and sees one in particular (the eponymous Purple Rose of Cairo) several times until, during one viewing, the film’s hero Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) turns to her and says, “Boy, you must really like this movie,” before stepping out of the screen and whisking her away. They run off together while the theatre patrons, and the studio executives behind the movie, freak out, and while the other characters on screen are left in limbo because the story can’t go on without Tom. Eventually, Gil Shepherd, the actor who plays Tom Baxter, is sent to find his alter ego and finds himself competing with, well, himself for Cecilia’s affections, leaving her with a choice: the real man who might break her heart, or the perfect man who is unfortunately fictional.

Allen does a good job setting Cecilia up as someone trapped in poverty, who can’t leave her husband no matter how disillusioning her marriage is. She packs her bags, leaves and wanders the streets for a while, just long enough to see a couple of women (one played by Dianne Weist) preparing to prostitute themselves. She looks dazed then turns around and goes home, knowing that none of her options are good. When Tom comes along, he brings with him his fictional outlook on life, the life lived on-screen where there’s no Depression, where people have wonderful adventures and say perfectly witty things, and the hero is always faithful to the woman he loves, and his hair never gets mussed when he gets into a fight. Tom is a nice guy (“He’s fictional, but you can’t have everything,” Cecilia concludes), but is limited by the confines of his script. “Dad was a card,” he tells Cecilia. “I never met him. He died before the movie began.” Later, he expresses surprise that life doesn’t fade out when things get heated, and that his screen money, which is abundant, is worthless in the real world.

When Gil comes along, he offers Cecilia something that is both similar and different. He’s the person who created Tom (although Tom disagrees and he and Gil engage in a battle of semantics in which it is eventually agreed that the writer created Tom but Gil gave him life), but lacks Tom’s innocence. In place of that, though, he has carries bona fide Hollywood glamour and Cecilia is quick to fall under his spell. For a time, it seems that he, too, is falling for her, or at least the way she fawns over him and boosts his self-esteem. Sensing that he’s losing out, Tom takes Cecilia into the movie, which of course throws the whole story off kilter. Luckily the other characters don’t care that much since they’re finally moving forward again. Now Cecilia must choose between a fake life with a fictional character where she’ll have everything she could ever want, but none of it will be real; or a real life with a real person who might disappoint her and break her heart.

Farrow gives an excellently layered performance as someone who, in certain respects, is just as innocent and wide-eyed as Tom, but also knowing enough to recognize much of what he says as “movie talk” that doesn’t amount to much in the real world. She floats effortlessly from the comedic to the tragic, touching on both with only a movement of her face in close-up in the film’s final moments. Daniels is also excellent playing a dual role, creating two very distinct personalities for both characters. I’ve never really known what to make of his final moment in the film – is he remorseful simply because he’s given up Cecilia, or is it also that he’s realized that even with the benefit of the Hollywood glamour machine, he’ll still never be half the man that Tom Baxter was? – but it’s effective nonetheless.

The dialogue is as sharp as it is in all of Allen’s comedies, specially tuned in this case to it’s era (“I want to be free! I want out!” of the characters in the film within the film says. “I’m warning you, that’s Commie talk!” the studio lawyer replies), and it’s gentle in its post-modernism, couching it’s pointed, philosophical questions in humour. Which one is, after all, real: Tom or Gil? Gil is certainly the real person, but Tom is the one who will “live” forever via the medium of film, outliving Gil for as long as people watch the movie. And if people connect with Gil only through the film, by watching Tom, then doesn’t Tom usurp him as the real one, just as actors such as James Stewart, Humphrey Bogart and Greta Garbo exist to us now more as their screen personas than as actual people? But maybe it doesn’t matter at all what’s real and what’s fake, just as long as it’s there for you to escape into at the end of a hard day.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Annie Hall (1977)

Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton

A nervous romance. It might just be the most accurate tagline a film ever had, perfectly summing up not only the relationship between Alvy (Woody Allen) and Annie (Diane Keaton), but also the on-screen persona of Woody Allen. This is an unusual romantic comedy, running counter to many of the conventions of the genre. It’s self-aware and self-reflexive, it’s non-linear and, most importantly, it ends with the couple apart. What Allen gives us is not a fairytale about why love works, but a deconstruction of the ways that sometimes love doesn’t work.

It begins with Alvy telling us that “‘I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.’ That’s the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women.” It’s most certainly true of his relationship with Annie, the end of which he is lamenting as the film opens. We see the entire relationship play out, from their first meeting and the fun, getting-to-know-you days, to the impasse point where the relationship is either going to become serious or isn’t, which is when Alvy begins to get nervous. He loves Annie (“I lurve you, I loave you, I luff you”) but doesn’t want to make the commitment, although he tries to keep her from realizing it. She moves in with him, then realizes that he didn’t really want her to move in with him. He deflects his own neuroses by making her self-conscious, encouraging her to take adult education and start therapy. However, these two things only serve to make the relationship more unstable because she becomes more assertive, less malleable and he begins to loose his grip on her. They break up, they get back together and, eventually, break up again. In a lot of ways, they’re perfect for each other (this fact is apparent in a scene between Alvy and another woman in which he attempts to recreate the experience of cooking lobster with Annie, to less than stellar results), but she’s still discovering who she is as a person while he already knows who he is, and so they become less compatible as the relationship progresses.

Allen wholly eliminates the fourth wall, making us more confidante than audience. He directly addresses us several times, imploring us to back him up. He breaks down the barrier between the characters and the story by having them wander into flashbacks and fantasy sequences, observe them as they’re going on and comment on how they’re going. He makes reference to the way this film is structured, telling us at the beginning that his mind tends to jump all over the place (as the story will in terms of chronology), and making the first time we see Alvy and Annie together a scene from the middle of their relationship. They’re going to a movie but find out when they’re buying tickets that it has already started. Alvy is distraught and calls it off, reminding Annie that he can’t start a movie in the middle.

But even without it’s self-reflexivity, this is still a film that can be set apart from other romantic comedies in terms of tone and characterization. Allen perfectly captures the awkwardness of trying to have a conversation with someone you just met when Alvy and Annie carry on a conversation about photography while subtitles show us what they're really thinking; and he’s effective at showing how Alvy pulls Annie closer with one hand, while keeping her at arm’s length with the other, usually using passive-aggressive humour to mask what he’s doing (“Whose idea was it?” he asks with regards to her moving in after she accuses him of thinking she’s trying to trap him. “Mine,” she says. “But I approved it immediately.”). The characters are nicely layered, with humanity and intelligence sandwiched between various neuroses. Annie, as played by Diane Keaton, has become a touchstone for female characters in comedies, although the “Annie Hall type” has mutated through the years, retaining the fidgets and foot-in-mouth moments but losing much of the intelligence and charm. Keaton is perfect as Annie, which in a sense is a shame because she’s a great actress but has sort of become stuck in this persona, still playing variations on this character today, although now the character usually comes in the form of a meddling mother.

It goes without saying that this is a very funny movie, the funniest parts coming when it moves out of it’s New York locale to Los Angeles, where Allen mercilessly satirizes Hollywood. He has a friend who drives around in his convertible with a special hood in order to keep his skin youthful. He goes to a party where the guests only talk about arranging meetings (“He gives good meeting,” one says to another with admiration), and one (played by Jeff Goldbloom) makes a phone call in order to be reminded of what his mantra is. Allen’s feelings on the soullessness of Los Angeles in general, but Hollywood specifically (“They give out awards for everything. Adolf Hitler, Best Dictator”) are obvious, but nonetheless funny, just as his love for New York is obvious but nonetheless touching, and it’s telling that the city is so adoringly framed given that Annie – now gone Hollywood – tells him that he’s the human equivalent of New York. This film, which reverberates with touches of autobiography, is perhaps just one giant exercise in mental masturbation (“Don’t knock it,” Alvy tells Annie, “it’s sex with someone I love”) on Allen’s part, but what can I say? I’m a sucker for his brand of self-deprecating narcissism.