Another year, another Woody Allen picture, and few agree on whether that’s a good thing. For some, he hasn’t made an interesting film since Husbands and Wives, maybe even Hannah and Her Sisters. Others think more recent morality plays like Match Point and comic parables like Midnight in Paris prove the old dog still hunts.
I’m in the middle. I’m amazed he makes films like Blue Jasmine seem fresh and lively when he works in such a closed creative ecosystem — in which no music seems to have penetrated his consciousness in any meaningful way since the jazz of the ’50s, no theater since early Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and no movies since Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers in 1972.
More damaging to his work is his congealed worldview. Long ago Allen concluded the universe was godless, justice-less, and meaningless. The best we can do is eke out our hopeless lives with, as he titled one of his movie, whatever works.
Here’s what still works for Allen: filmmaking. He continues to refine his technique. His movies are lighter, leaner, more fluid. Blue Jasmine is sour and derivative, but he sells it beautifully.
He does read newspapers, and in interviews expresses strong opinions about the unscrupulousness of Wall Street titans. In Blue Jasmine, he makes his protagonist a kind of younger Ruth Madoff, wife of swindler Bernie, and sets her down in an updated A Streetcar Named Desire.