ROTTEN WOODY
by Daren Foster

***The next person who tells me to see the latest Woody Allen movie? To the moon!!***

Let me issue a warning to everyone out there, a personal amber alert to the next person who says to me, “You know, you really should see the new Woody Allen movie. It’s the best thing he’s done in years, since ___________ (you fill in the blank here)”. Say that to me and I will smash you right in the throat. No warning, no questions asked, just a sucker punch to the larynx. I will then lean over your convulsing body that gasps for breath and ask, very rhetorically, if you have any other recommendations.

Likewise, Woody Allen hasn’t made an interesting movie since 1998’s Celebrity. For every entry in his very, very long list of entries that’s been worth a look (Bullets Over Broadway, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Broadway Danny Rose, Zelig) there are two or three that have been eye-splittingly awful (Interiors, September, Shadows and Fog, Small Time Crooks, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Melinda and Melinda, Match Point, Scoop.. oh my God, did that one stink up the joint!)

Yet, along comes Vicky Christina Barcelona and everyone’s going ga-ga again, talking of another Woody Allen renaissance. He rediscovered movie magic, someone said to me straight-faced, when he discovered Spain. No, I’m not making that up.

It must be nice for an artist to earn that kind of blind devotion. They get in under the skin at an early age and put down deep roots, making it difficult for followers to pry themselves free. To admit that your idol has slipped and slipped badly throws open the possibility that maybe your adoration was misplaced from the very beginning.

As I sat watching Vicky Christina Barcelona, what struck me wasn’t so much that Woody Allen had discovered Spain but that, tired of the dreary weather he’d endured in England during the filming of his last couple movies, he’d come across a travel brochure for Spain. It was all fiery spirited and sexually liberated painters, Gaudi designs, wild-haired, mercurial Mediterranean women, wine, and post-paella diners, coupled up, sitting around in a garden listening to the romantic strains of the Spanish classical guitar. The man hadn’t fallen in love with Spain so much as he’d Googled it.

Nothing in the movie rang true, starting with the fact that you have two American travelers in Barcelona at the height of summer and the place is empty. July and August in one of the Continent’s gems with nary another North American tourist in sight?! Have you ever been to Europe in the summer and tried to find a nice, quiet patio table somewhere down a sumptuous medieval alley? I’m sure Allen was working under a tight budget and extras were at a premium but the lack of hustle and bustle in Barcelona only contributed to the movie’s lack of authenticity.

Such inauthenticity also ran rampant with the characters populating Vicky Christina Barcelona. While both Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz battled mightily with the flimsy content they were given, they too ultimately succumbed to the stick figure portrayals drawn by a writer whose self-absorption has long trumped any sort of curiosity about the outside world. Perhaps they fared better than the other actors in the film because much of their dialogue was in Spanish and they didn’t have to uncork jaw-droppers like, “Let’s not get into one of those turgid categorical imperative arguments.” Or if they did, you excused them because English is their second language.

Allen has been unleashing that sort of unwieldy dialogue for most of his career, making his actresses all sound like a cross between Mia Farrow and Diane Keaton and his actors sound like, well, Woody Allen. It works and you forgive it when it’s being used in a funny vein. When Allen’s being serious, however, it’s simply a drone that grates, leaving you with the impression of having sat through a high school playwright’s stab at being August Strindberg.

Yes, the Scandinavians have a lot to answer for in the decline of Woody Allen the filmmaker. Once upon a time, the man made a couple of truly great films, Manhattan and Annie Hall in 1979 and 1977 respectively. Not for nothing was the term ‘comedic genius’ used in proximity to his name. Unfortunately, Allen found the adjective a little pejorative and felt (probably with some justification) that only by being serious-minded could he ever be taken seriously. So, he turned away from his comedy roots for inspiration to his idol, Ingmar Bergman.

OK. Since I’m spending time slagging revered movie directors, let me stop momentarily on Ingmar Bergman. Without pride and a little bit of shame, I confess that I simply don’t get it. Try as I might to uncrack the nut that is cinematic Bergmania, the man and his oeuvre escape me. Maybe back in the day when the Hollywood studio system was running out of steam and churning out nothing but piffle, he filled the need for substance in hungry young cineastes. In Europe, just emerging from yet more carnage in World War II, there was a desperate search for existential understanding and the meaning of who we are and what we do. Where else to turn but to a doleful Swede with his head full of Kiekegaard?

Me? I’m like Steve Guttenberg’s Eddie Simmons in Diner, dragged against his will to a showing of The Seventh Seal. I’ve been to the beach. A lot of beaches the world over. I’ve never seen death on the beach. And then I fall asleep.

Even if I felt the need to do an artistic 180 and prove myself a very serious, highbrow talent, Ingmar Bergman would not be the one I sought to emulate. It’s unfortunate Allen did as it has done nothing but irreparable harm to his filmmaking sensibilities and reputation. A reputation much in tatters due to his less than stellar, one might even call creepy, off-screen conduct.

For the past fifteen years or so, Woody Allen has spent much of his professional career trying desperately to justify taking up with Mia Farrow’s young, young daughter as the couple split very bitterly and publicly. While never accused of any illegal behaviour, a moral cloud has hung over Allen and many of his movies since then have dealt with older man-younger woman, slightly illicit relationships. 1999’s Sweet and Lowdown seemed to best encapsulate Allen’s view on this: if you’re a genius who gives the world the gift of your art, how you discharge your personal life should be of little consequence.

Any artist with such a tenuously self-serving argument had better deliver the goods for it to have any traction whatsoever. Woody Allen stopped delivering long ago. Nothing in Vicky Christina Barcelona reverses that trend which is something I’m going to desperately try and remember when anyone highly recommends that I go and see the next must see Woody Allen movie.