What a career. Woody Allen has always been mainly a storyteller. A clever one. He is superficially rooted and swings around a really very reduced set of characters and environments: high class new york society, stylized gangster, movie people, film-going and so on. Those are superficial elements, ingredients with which he cooks all sorts of dishes. In this film he revisits all of those at once.
Along the otherwise standard love/adultery story, we get all sorts of obvious or subtle references to many of Woody's past films, and that's what's great about this little film:
-The movie begins in Movieland, and moves seamlessly to new york, back home, because the Allen surrogate on-screen doesn't fit in Los Angeles. But our characters belong in the world of films, and along the way we watch them watching two films that references precisely the kind of past world (as represented in films) that this film taps into. The cinematography of this film plays along, specially in its closeups of faces, with the background beautifully detached by the use of the shallow depth of field so typical of older films;
-arriving in New York, the bridge, which evokes the most iconic single image that Allen, with Gordon Willis, gave us. The references to his Manhattan are completed with the off-voice narration (with his now slower and mellower older voice) and the basic dynamics of the marriage (Carell has an affair with the woman that Eisenberg loves)
-the jazz score and bar joints: not that he doesn't use often jazz scores, but here he is returning to it ostensibly after a period of experimentation. The dark jazz places evoke Allen's own second life as a jazz clarinetist;
-the Jewish jokes;
-after a long time producing films with competent but unremarkable cinematography, Woody joins here with a true master, and this is visually his most beautiful film in a long time, and will stand together with his collaborations with Niqvist, Willis, Palma... Few people have made color tell so much as Storaro. His camera work is impeccable, and adds a 4th dimension to any scene. And those last shots of both Stewart and Eisenberg... those will stick. I'm so thankful that there are such painters still working;
-the ending is the saddest since Purple Rose of Cairo, and as unsettling as Crimes and Misdemeanors, without the inner self- reference of either, but with that perfect balance of lyricism and cynicism that his better tragicomedies have always made.
The self-reference here are all (or many) of Allen's previous films, before he went filming around the world. I didn't get all of them, and that certainly is a reason to watch it again and again. Also i don't how many (if any) of the references are intentional. But i watched this film and read it as a kind of Testament by the master to his own career, a bit like Kurosawa did on the film i quote at the title of this review. Oh i hope he will be around to give us a few more adventures, but if this was his last film, he would leave us at sweet high point.
But please, "not yet"
Along the otherwise standard love/adultery story, we get all sorts of obvious or subtle references to many of Woody's past films, and that's what's great about this little film:
-The movie begins in Movieland, and moves seamlessly to new york, back home, because the Allen surrogate on-screen doesn't fit in Los Angeles. But our characters belong in the world of films, and along the way we watch them watching two films that references precisely the kind of past world (as represented in films) that this film taps into. The cinematography of this film plays along, specially in its closeups of faces, with the background beautifully detached by the use of the shallow depth of field so typical of older films;
-arriving in New York, the bridge, which evokes the most iconic single image that Allen, with Gordon Willis, gave us. The references to his Manhattan are completed with the off-voice narration (with his now slower and mellower older voice) and the basic dynamics of the marriage (Carell has an affair with the woman that Eisenberg loves)
-the jazz score and bar joints: not that he doesn't use often jazz scores, but here he is returning to it ostensibly after a period of experimentation. The dark jazz places evoke Allen's own second life as a jazz clarinetist;
-the Jewish jokes;
-after a long time producing films with competent but unremarkable cinematography, Woody joins here with a true master, and this is visually his most beautiful film in a long time, and will stand together with his collaborations with Niqvist, Willis, Palma... Few people have made color tell so much as Storaro. His camera work is impeccable, and adds a 4th dimension to any scene. And those last shots of both Stewart and Eisenberg... those will stick. I'm so thankful that there are such painters still working;
-the ending is the saddest since Purple Rose of Cairo, and as unsettling as Crimes and Misdemeanors, without the inner self- reference of either, but with that perfect balance of lyricism and cynicism that his better tragicomedies have always made.
The self-reference here are all (or many) of Allen's previous films, before he went filming around the world. I didn't get all of them, and that certainly is a reason to watch it again and again. Also i don't how many (if any) of the references are intentional. But i watched this film and read it as a kind of Testament by the master to his own career, a bit like Kurosawa did on the film i quote at the title of this review. Oh i hope he will be around to give us a few more adventures, but if this was his last film, he would leave us at sweet high point.
But please, "not yet"