Ambition is such a tricky thing. Without ambition, Allen would never have made either Annie Hall or Manhattan. He really stretched. And I just saw Manhattan again, for the first time in years, and I found it nearly pitch perfect. Everything flows. Well, it's understandable that this level of achievement would embolden Allen to go deeper into Auteurism and Personal Cinema. But scenes like the Three Sister Luncheon in this film set the bar really high. Really high. Too high.
It's not like all the characters sound like little Woody Allens. That would come later. But their dialogue is such empty Upper New York chit - chat that reveals so little about inner life. I admit it is an amazing gift, the ability to reveal and expose the inner life of superficial characters. Few filmmakers have been able to do it - I'm thinking of Renoir and The Rules of the Game. But if you're gonna go there, you'd better be READY to go there! And...well, this film is fatally infected with Toxic Middlebrow - ism, and so you can't really tell whether Woody thinks their conversations are deep and revealing or pseudo - deep and pseudo - revealing. He's good, but not good enough to make a thing like that clear.
There's one scene I love: the one where Woody and Diane Wiest go on a date. She takes him to a Punk show. He retorts with Bobby Short. Bobby Short at the Carlyle equaling "Good Music" or "Real Music" tells me all I need to know about why I respect and appreciate this movie, but will never love it. The way that different kinds of Art can describe the gulf that exists between people - that is truth. And that's the same gulf I feel between this Ersatz Masterpiece and the Films in my Pantheon.
It's not like all the characters sound like little Woody Allens. That would come later. But their dialogue is such empty Upper New York chit - chat that reveals so little about inner life. I admit it is an amazing gift, the ability to reveal and expose the inner life of superficial characters. Few filmmakers have been able to do it - I'm thinking of Renoir and The Rules of the Game. But if you're gonna go there, you'd better be READY to go there! And...well, this film is fatally infected with Toxic Middlebrow - ism, and so you can't really tell whether Woody thinks their conversations are deep and revealing or pseudo - deep and pseudo - revealing. He's good, but not good enough to make a thing like that clear.
There's one scene I love: the one where Woody and Diane Wiest go on a date. She takes him to a Punk show. He retorts with Bobby Short. Bobby Short at the Carlyle equaling "Good Music" or "Real Music" tells me all I need to know about why I respect and appreciate this movie, but will never love it. The way that different kinds of Art can describe the gulf that exists between people - that is truth. And that's the same gulf I feel between this Ersatz Masterpiece and the Films in my Pantheon.