Lileks describes:
Woody Allen has put more wood in the mouth of his characters than the guy who invented the disposable tongue depressor. Perhaps it’s this: Allen is a nihilist whose characters search for meaning; the Coen Brothers are romantics whose characters confront reality. The former example is grounded in the futility of it all; the latter is a caution against finding too much meaning in the swells and peaks and troughs of life. Not to say you shouldn’t look: that’s what art is for, as “Finding” clearly suggests. Something makes him sing like that. But in the end it’s not art that redeems him. The idea seems ridiculous, a sophomoric conceit.
RTWT.
“John Goodman was great, as ever – and really, there’s no reason he couldn’t have been Mad Man Mundt, could he?”
He must be one of the busiest actors. It seems like he has supporting roles in every movie.
“Interesting Woody came to mind; I used to love his stuff, but remember the exact moment when I realized he couldn’t write dialogue for actual human beings.”
Go back and watch Manhattan and keep in mind Allen’s personal life. Very creepy.
I may be the only person in the pro-freedom blogosphere who is, and remains, a Woody Allen fan. Assuming the personal allegations against him are true, they’re irrelevant to the pleasure his films have given me. It’s true that there was this period in the 2000s when he seemed to have lost his Muse, but now his later work has entertained me, too, even if it doesn’t provide me with the warm-and-fuzzy feelings MANHATTAN and EVERYBODY SAYS I LOVE YOU give me.
I liked “Midnight in Paris” and “Vicky, Christina, Barcelona” a lot.
I thought “To Rome With Love” was unbelievably horrid.
“Blue Jasmine” was great.
So the guy can make entertaining movies. These days, I suspect the movie is better if he’s not in it.
I can take only so much of the unsure nebbish Woody Allen character.
I like his earlier, funnier movies.
I’m with Bilwick, in that I too am a Woody Allen fan. I thought that analysis was pretty much correct. I am probably biased here since my Dad was ten years older than Allen grew up off Myrtle Ave in a working class family, went to City College, married a string of his students, and was completely neurotic. So I grew up around people who talked like Woody Allen. So his movies always seemed natural to me.
I do like the Cohen Brothers as well, but their movies are actually much more artificial than Allen’s, more mannered and ironic, not that there is anything wrong with that, and I love their sensibility as well. But absurdism is fundamentally different from introspection. I love Bergman as well so maybe that is it. I think it is interesting that the more serious Cohen Bros films, such as “A Serious Man” are among their least popular, though that is a personal favorite. I think it just changing taste. Most of Allen’s less popular movies are just not comedies and thus less accessible, while almost every Cohen movie is, though some are quite black.
Roy, I liked A SERIOUS MAN as well. A Jewish friend of mine recommended it to me, saying it “may be the most Jewish movie ever made.” I’m not Jewish, but I find the Tribe interesting and familiar (I grew up in NYC), and that was enough of a recommendation to me. One Coen Brothers movie I wasn’t that impressed by was their version of TRUE GRIT. I enjoyed it, but I had been reading all this hype about how much more faithful to the novel it was going to be. This was odd, because the John Wayne version is pretty faithful to the novel, too. It took some liberties, but so did the Coen Brothers’ version–to my mind, even greater liberties. It’s pretty much a toss-up as to which version is more faithful. I’m hoping Woody Allen will one day do his version. “To Mattie Ross, Fort Smith was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary Arkansas culture. The same lack of integrity that caused so many people to take the easy way out, robbing banks and trains and stealing horses. . . .”
“The same lack of integrity to cause so many people to take the easy way out…
… was rapidly turning the town of his dreams…”