An eerie, deafening silence (save for the occasional sigh) permeated the theater in which I saw Woody Allen's latest, the odious Whatever Works. I don't think a single of Woody's famously 'witty' lines earned so much as a smirk for any of the patrons--- rather, we were all in awe of Allen's shockingly narcissistic misanthropy. Woody Allen, who was at one time unquestionably one of America's truly great film makers, has grown out of touch with the city and its people that he once portrayed so lovingly. There was a time when he could view New York and New Yorkers from outside the isolated prism of The Five Boroughs, but his newer work reflects the inclusive, effete snobbery that he once so pointedly and piercingly ridiculed earlier in his career. Not a 'comeback' (has any director alive had more 'comebacks'?) so much as a half-hearted return to what he's told he does best, Whatever Works is the nasty B-side to Woody Allen's great love songs to New York (think Woody Allen's Gran Torino and you're halfway there).
There is arguably no film maker alive who has done more to contribute to New York's rich filmic history than Woody Allen. He has captured the city's unique, breathtaking beauty and majesty, all the while wryly observing the unique social climate that separates New York from all the world's other big cities. With that in mind, the way New York is treated in Whatever Works is a travesty--- as a nameless, nondescript metropolis. In his stronger works, New York was a character unto itself, but Woody Allen has clearly lost the passion that he once had for New York; perhaps he doesn't like what the city has become, or maybe he's more interested in his fancy-schmancy European locales. Either way, the spark simply isn't there anymore.
The fundamental problem of Whatever Works is highlighted by Allen's choice of leading-man (or stand-in), Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David. At its best, Allen's self-absorption reached poetic heights when he would play characters like Alvy Singer (Annie Hall), Isaac Davis (Manhattan), Gabe Roth (Husbands and Wives), or Harry Block (Deconstructing Harry)--- all characters self-involved to the nth degree. But Allen would inflect these characters with certain mannerisms that would endear them, because he would reveal their ultimate humanity through these quirks. It was the little touches in his performance that would expose his characters as insecure and lonely underneath the mask of vast cultural knowledge and inspired witticisms, and this element is what gave his earlier works their dramatic weight (and by 'early' I mean beyond the 80s and into the 90s). He is very rarely given his dues as an actor; but look at the raw humanity exposed in the closing moments of Manhattan, surely an homage to the end of City Lights, and in many ways the emotional equal of Chaplin's famous final closing shot. Or his transformation from narcissistic, vindictive asshole to empathetic, illuminated artist over the course of Deconstructing Harry, or the poignancy with which love and loss is reflected on over final lines of Annie Hall. I don't want to go on too terribly long a polemic in favor of Allen's performances, but the point is that even while he's presenting what seems to be the same character on the surface, he subtly, though effectively differentiates his core themes.
It is Allen himself that is the unifying feature of most of his strongest works, in the same way the presence of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, or Harold Lloyd unified their films. As he's gotten older, he's used actors to stand-in for himself, though still playing variants on the same core 'Woody' character--- Jason Biggs, Will Ferrell, and now Larry David (he actually pre-emptively satirized this in Deconstructing Harry, which had Tobey Maguire, Robin Williams, Stanley Tucci and Richard Benjamin playing Woody type characters in the titular characters' short stories). On paper, Larry David sounds like the perfect outlet for Woody Allen's endearing pseudo-diatribes. On screen, however, David is frustratingly one-note and hammy (and this is coming from someone who loves Curb Your Enthusiasm), and I never felt like the David's Boris Yellnikoff was really fleshed out in any meaningful way beyond shallow broad strokes; when the movie begins he's an angry, self-involved misanthrope and when the movie ends he's a marginally less angry, though still hugely self-involved misanthrope. David's awkwardness in the role is highlighted immediately in an opening scene that I can only describe as painful--- the movie begins with Boris and a few 'friends' of his (it's hard to imagine a character so unlikable gaining and maintaining friendship, but I digress) sitting around while he expounds on the worthlessness of humanity, his superiority, and his belief in amorality and self-indulgence (whatever works!). David, in typical Woody Allen fashion, breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the audience--- only Allen uses this opportunity to insult the audience; Allen, via Boris, informs us that we've 'wasted our money' to buy 'some moron in Hollywood another swimming pool' and that if we're "one of those idiots who needs a happy ending" that we'd "better leave now". I don't have a latent desire for a happy ending, and I certainly don't think I'm an idiot, but looking back on it I wish I'd taken Allen's advice.
In interviews, Allen has been forthright about his contempt for young people ("The films that are made for young people are not wonderful films, they are not thoughtful. They are these blockbusters with special effects. The comedies are dumb, full of toilet jokes, not sophisticated at all. And these are the things the young people embrace. I do not idolize the young."), and one need only look at the disdainful portrait of young people in 2004's Melinda and Melinda for proof of this outlook. He takes this contemptuous attitude to an extreme in Whatever Works, manifested in Evan Rachel Wood's character, Melodie St. Ann Celestine; a Mississippi girl who ran away from home looking for love and excitement in the Big Apple (and this makes one wonder if Allen has ever been to the south). She winds up in an alley near Boris' apartment in the beginning of the film, asking for something to eat. After being reticent to allow her inside--- after all, she is but a submental inchworm cracker (his words)--- Boris eventually recants and gives her food, and eventually even allows her to stay with him while she gets her feet on the ground (because he "has a heart as big as the outdoors" he tells us, and it's hard to tell if he's joking or not).
Since she's one of those dreaded young people, Allen knows that she is incapable of an original thought--- and, if she stumbles upon a unique insight every once in a while, it certainly isn't a very interesting or deep one. As the movie presses on and their relationship develops, Melodie drops the bombshell that she has developed a "little crush" on Boris (Allen shirks off any morality element with respect to the May/December romance by making her the aggressor), because she has mistaken his misanthropic platitudes for wisdom and insight (those stupid kids can't even tell the difference, Allen is telling us). No, she's not interested in the male-bimbos she meets around the city of New York--- you know the ones I mean, the ones with no real drive, personality, opinions, or goals--- the ones with names like Perry Singleton (ho, ho) who drag you to band concerts with names like Anal Sphincter, and force you to hob-knob with his equally vacuous friends. I suppose that, in contrast to this, Boris' pessimistic elitism is more desirable, but then a lobotomy is preferable to both of those potentialities (thank God she meets an Englander who sweeps her off her feet, and this is the only character that Allen gives any dignity to whatsoever).
But there is never anything remotely believable about the way the relationship between Melodie and Boris develops over the course of the movie. In Manhattan, the relationship between Woody Allen's 42 year old Isaac Davis and Mariel Hemingway's 17 year old Tracy is believable because Hemingway's character is already an 'adult' in every sense of the word, while the other so-called 'adult' characters in the film are actually quite childish. Conversely, in Whatever Works, the 21 year-old Melodie might as well be 13--- she doesn't need a grown-man because she is still a child emotionally, and Boris' cranky old man schtick doesn't seem at all compatible with the sweet, bubbly nature of Melodie.
Allen's disdainful perspective toward the south is more clearly illuminated when Melodie's parents come into the picture. Allen uses these characters as a gateway towards attacking what he seems to view as the southern Christian theocracy--- all bible thumping, sexually repressed gun nuts just waiting to come to the big city so they can shed their 'traditional' skin and become the promiscuous amoral sluts they were always were on the inside. Allen isn't suggesting that one should simply be who they are--- he's saying that one way of life is qualitatively better than the other. His titular slogan and philosophy, endorsed by Larry David's Boris Yellnikoff, is one of amorality and apathy--- fuck a sheep, cheat on your wife, marry this person while you're sleeping with someone else, whatever--- there's no God, no consequences, nothing... and that's what Allen's so-called 'statement' ultimately amounts to. Like Deconstructing Harry without the deconstruction, Whatever Works embraces Boris' hateful world-view instead of transcending it.
Woody Allen will always be one of the greats, but his later work reflects his apathy toward audiences--- the overriding impression I got from Whatever Works was that the man simply doesn't care anymore. This is the time for Allen to grow as an artist--- a film maker's later years are often among their richest, but Allen is content to remain stagnant; I don't want to see him making the same movie he was making 30 years ago, I want to know how a man in his 70s, whose fear of death is legendary, feels about getting older and dying. But Allen is content to pander to his inclusive fan base and half-heartedly tell the same story has been telling most of his career, only there was a time when he told this kind of story effectively. Instead of expanding upon the themes that defined him as one of America's most idiosyncratic auteurs, Allen has indulged his worst assumptions about humanity, and Whatever Works is the unfortunate result.
There is arguably no film maker alive who has done more to contribute to New York's rich filmic history than Woody Allen. He has captured the city's unique, breathtaking beauty and majesty, all the while wryly observing the unique social climate that separates New York from all the world's other big cities. With that in mind, the way New York is treated in Whatever Works is a travesty--- as a nameless, nondescript metropolis. In his stronger works, New York was a character unto itself, but Woody Allen has clearly lost the passion that he once had for New York; perhaps he doesn't like what the city has become, or maybe he's more interested in his fancy-schmancy European locales. Either way, the spark simply isn't there anymore.
The fundamental problem of Whatever Works is highlighted by Allen's choice of leading-man (or stand-in), Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David. At its best, Allen's self-absorption reached poetic heights when he would play characters like Alvy Singer (Annie Hall), Isaac Davis (Manhattan), Gabe Roth (Husbands and Wives), or Harry Block (Deconstructing Harry)--- all characters self-involved to the nth degree. But Allen would inflect these characters with certain mannerisms that would endear them, because he would reveal their ultimate humanity through these quirks. It was the little touches in his performance that would expose his characters as insecure and lonely underneath the mask of vast cultural knowledge and inspired witticisms, and this element is what gave his earlier works their dramatic weight (and by 'early' I mean beyond the 80s and into the 90s). He is very rarely given his dues as an actor; but look at the raw humanity exposed in the closing moments of Manhattan, surely an homage to the end of City Lights, and in many ways the emotional equal of Chaplin's famous final closing shot. Or his transformation from narcissistic, vindictive asshole to empathetic, illuminated artist over the course of Deconstructing Harry, or the poignancy with which love and loss is reflected on over final lines of Annie Hall. I don't want to go on too terribly long a polemic in favor of Allen's performances, but the point is that even while he's presenting what seems to be the same character on the surface, he subtly, though effectively differentiates his core themes.
It is Allen himself that is the unifying feature of most of his strongest works, in the same way the presence of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, or Harold Lloyd unified their films. As he's gotten older, he's used actors to stand-in for himself, though still playing variants on the same core 'Woody' character--- Jason Biggs, Will Ferrell, and now Larry David (he actually pre-emptively satirized this in Deconstructing Harry, which had Tobey Maguire, Robin Williams, Stanley Tucci and Richard Benjamin playing Woody type characters in the titular characters' short stories). On paper, Larry David sounds like the perfect outlet for Woody Allen's endearing pseudo-diatribes. On screen, however, David is frustratingly one-note and hammy (and this is coming from someone who loves Curb Your Enthusiasm), and I never felt like the David's Boris Yellnikoff was really fleshed out in any meaningful way beyond shallow broad strokes; when the movie begins he's an angry, self-involved misanthrope and when the movie ends he's a marginally less angry, though still hugely self-involved misanthrope. David's awkwardness in the role is highlighted immediately in an opening scene that I can only describe as painful--- the movie begins with Boris and a few 'friends' of his (it's hard to imagine a character so unlikable gaining and maintaining friendship, but I digress) sitting around while he expounds on the worthlessness of humanity, his superiority, and his belief in amorality and self-indulgence (whatever works!). David, in typical Woody Allen fashion, breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the audience--- only Allen uses this opportunity to insult the audience; Allen, via Boris, informs us that we've 'wasted our money' to buy 'some moron in Hollywood another swimming pool' and that if we're "one of those idiots who needs a happy ending" that we'd "better leave now". I don't have a latent desire for a happy ending, and I certainly don't think I'm an idiot, but looking back on it I wish I'd taken Allen's advice.
In interviews, Allen has been forthright about his contempt for young people ("The films that are made for young people are not wonderful films, they are not thoughtful. They are these blockbusters with special effects. The comedies are dumb, full of toilet jokes, not sophisticated at all. And these are the things the young people embrace. I do not idolize the young."), and one need only look at the disdainful portrait of young people in 2004's Melinda and Melinda for proof of this outlook. He takes this contemptuous attitude to an extreme in Whatever Works, manifested in Evan Rachel Wood's character, Melodie St. Ann Celestine; a Mississippi girl who ran away from home looking for love and excitement in the Big Apple (and this makes one wonder if Allen has ever been to the south). She winds up in an alley near Boris' apartment in the beginning of the film, asking for something to eat. After being reticent to allow her inside--- after all, she is but a submental inchworm cracker (his words)--- Boris eventually recants and gives her food, and eventually even allows her to stay with him while she gets her feet on the ground (because he "has a heart as big as the outdoors" he tells us, and it's hard to tell if he's joking or not).
Since she's one of those dreaded young people, Allen knows that she is incapable of an original thought--- and, if she stumbles upon a unique insight every once in a while, it certainly isn't a very interesting or deep one. As the movie presses on and their relationship develops, Melodie drops the bombshell that she has developed a "little crush" on Boris (Allen shirks off any morality element with respect to the May/December romance by making her the aggressor), because she has mistaken his misanthropic platitudes for wisdom and insight (those stupid kids can't even tell the difference, Allen is telling us). No, she's not interested in the male-bimbos she meets around the city of New York--- you know the ones I mean, the ones with no real drive, personality, opinions, or goals--- the ones with names like Perry Singleton (ho, ho) who drag you to band concerts with names like Anal Sphincter, and force you to hob-knob with his equally vacuous friends. I suppose that, in contrast to this, Boris' pessimistic elitism is more desirable, but then a lobotomy is preferable to both of those potentialities (thank God she meets an Englander who sweeps her off her feet, and this is the only character that Allen gives any dignity to whatsoever).
But there is never anything remotely believable about the way the relationship between Melodie and Boris develops over the course of the movie. In Manhattan, the relationship between Woody Allen's 42 year old Isaac Davis and Mariel Hemingway's 17 year old Tracy is believable because Hemingway's character is already an 'adult' in every sense of the word, while the other so-called 'adult' characters in the film are actually quite childish. Conversely, in Whatever Works, the 21 year-old Melodie might as well be 13--- she doesn't need a grown-man because she is still a child emotionally, and Boris' cranky old man schtick doesn't seem at all compatible with the sweet, bubbly nature of Melodie.
Allen's disdainful perspective toward the south is more clearly illuminated when Melodie's parents come into the picture. Allen uses these characters as a gateway towards attacking what he seems to view as the southern Christian theocracy--- all bible thumping, sexually repressed gun nuts just waiting to come to the big city so they can shed their 'traditional' skin and become the promiscuous amoral sluts they were always were on the inside. Allen isn't suggesting that one should simply be who they are--- he's saying that one way of life is qualitatively better than the other. His titular slogan and philosophy, endorsed by Larry David's Boris Yellnikoff, is one of amorality and apathy--- fuck a sheep, cheat on your wife, marry this person while you're sleeping with someone else, whatever--- there's no God, no consequences, nothing... and that's what Allen's so-called 'statement' ultimately amounts to. Like Deconstructing Harry without the deconstruction, Whatever Works embraces Boris' hateful world-view instead of transcending it.
Woody Allen will always be one of the greats, but his later work reflects his apathy toward audiences--- the overriding impression I got from Whatever Works was that the man simply doesn't care anymore. This is the time for Allen to grow as an artist--- a film maker's later years are often among their richest, but Allen is content to remain stagnant; I don't want to see him making the same movie he was making 30 years ago, I want to know how a man in his 70s, whose fear of death is legendary, feels about getting older and dying. But Allen is content to pander to his inclusive fan base and half-heartedly tell the same story has been telling most of his career, only there was a time when he told this kind of story effectively. Instead of expanding upon the themes that defined him as one of America's most idiosyncratic auteurs, Allen has indulged his worst assumptions about humanity, and Whatever Works is the unfortunate result.
