MovieMonday: Manhattan

I'd seen this movie at least twice before and thought it would be nice, given the moment, to revisit Woody Allen's homage to Manhattan.  The film was released in 1979, a period when the city was regarded as an urban hellhole typified by sleazy characters in Times Square and dirty subway cars covered with graffiti.

Maybe Allen wanted to give another view.  He wrote and acted in the script, which was rendered beautifully in broad-screen black and white by master cinematographer Gordon Willis.  Willis died in 2014, but still is admired and studied for his framing of scenes to signal subtle barriers of curtain and glass and to indicate in color the light and dark aspects of characters' natures.

The Willis camerawork, backed by the New York Philharmonic's lush rendering of Irving Berlin's music, gives Manhattan an aura that, in retrospect, its story cannot sustain.

Consider the period -- after the introduction of the birth control pill and before the contagions of herpes and HIV -- in which its characters came of age.  We have Isaac (Woody Allen,) who is involved with 17-year-old Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) and his ex-wife, Jill (Meryl Streep,) who is raising their largely ignored son with another woman and writing a tell-all book about their former marriage.   Then there is Isaac's humbly named friend, Yale (Michael Murphy,) who is happily married but also involved with Mary (Diane Keaton) in an extramarital relationship that seems not to trouble his spouse.

Through all the sturm und drang, Isaac and the other adults cannot articulate what they want, but they continually assert their erudition -- effectively, their self-absorption -- in discussions of interpersonal issues.

For me, the ultimate moment comes when Isaac and Mary -- each momentarily available and uncertain -- talk about their respective situations in a visit to the planetarium at the Museum of Natural History.

Think of it this way:  "...It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people
like you and me don't amount to more than a hill of beans in this crazy world cosmos."

In short, Isaac and his friends lack perspective.  Allen is laughing at himself and all the other ostensibly adult characters.  At least I hope so.

Ultimately, the most genuine character is Tracy, who is younger and taller than Isaac and who talks straight.  Early on, she says,  "Well, I told you before.  I think I'm in love with you."  She's the authentic grownup.

MovieMonday: Wonder Wheel

You probably missed your chance to see this movie in a theater.  In my town, it lasted a week or so and, in the manner of movies today, was replaced by a similarly titled film called "Wonder."  Perhaps that is just as well.

"Wonder Wheel" is this year's Woody Allen film.  Like 2013's well-received "Blue Jasmine," it is about a woman whose life is falling apart, but with a lot more noise and action around the edges.  

The setting is Coney Island in the 1950s, where Ginny (Kate Winslet) lives with her husband (Jim Belushi.)  He operates the merry-go-round while Ginny waits tables at a tourist restaurant.  The family ensemble is rounded out by Ginny's son from her first marriage; all we learn about him is that he is 10 years old and a serial arsonist.

As usual, Woody Allen wrote the script here, and he gave Ginny's husband an unusual name:  Humpty.  Given Allen's history, the name suggests not Humpty Dumpty but Humbert Humbert, he of Nabokov's "Lolita."  A little surprising. 

Ginny busted up her first marriage by having an affair, and Humpty is loud but loyal.  Still, she resents the loss of her early acting career and her family's straitened circumstances. Now she is having an affair with a lifeguard/graduate student named Mickey (Justin Timberlake) who sees himself as a "future dramatist."  

Mickey also narrates the film, rather as Alvy Singer used to narrate earlier Woody Allen movies.  Like Allen, Mickey's a Manhattanite who seems to view working-class people with tumultuous lives as material for future playwriting efforts. 

Into the family home comes Humpty's beautiful 25-year-old daughter, Carolina (Juno Temple,) who has left her husband.

"Frank's gonna kill me," Carolina says tells her father.

"That's what you get when you marry a gangster!" he remonstrates, but then he welcomes her home.  Because, of course, no gangster would think to look for his estranged wife (and a person of interest to the FBI) at her father's house.

Then Carolina meets Mickey, and they are attracted to each other.

Ginny figures this out, becomes jealous and reveals how much she has been counting on Mickey to rescue her from her disappointing life.

Eventually a couple bad guys wander into the picture.  We can tell they're mobsters because the same actors played lieutenants in Tony Soprano's crew. This stirs the plot and leads to the conclusion.  

Woody Allen has written and directed some fine movies, but this is not one of them.  Maybe next year.


Note:

Some of the dialogue in this movie is pretty blah.  Here are a few nuggets I jotted down.

-- "More stuff is out of our control than we'd like to admit."

-- "I ruined my life by being unfaithful once, and now I'm doing it again."

-- "You have so much to give and no one to give it to."

-- "I have book knowledge, but you've really tasted life."

-- "I've become consumed with jealousy."

-- "Maybe you misread my body language."