Last week I finally went to see Woody Allen's new film, Blue Jasmine, starring the wonderful Cate Blanchett, at the Ritzy Picturehouse in Brixton.
This will not be a long review, nor a scholar article. I just want to share with you what caught me more in this exquisite picture.
Suddenly I watched his new films without finding without finding that old New Yorker. And I know things change, and I also think it is very important for an artist of his level to be able to take risks. But, let's be honest. His last releases cannot possibly be compared to his old masterpieces, if not for the stable theme of couples forming and dismantling.
From the minute the film started, I had no more doubts, he is back with a suitcase full of his artistic life's experience, ready to move forward without forgetting the past.
The dicotomy past/future, expressed through the editing in Jasmine's flashbacks, is a constant in the film. But how does it involve the director even more than the character itself?
Woody Allen has set his films in the most different cities, but New York New York, and the Manhattan lifestyle, have always been a personal and artistic leitmotiv throughout his career.
Thinking about him as a character in his films, I have always noticed that the ones in which he looks like he is acting as himself, not as a character, are always the films having New York as a setting.
Annie Hall is a great example in terms of study of one's own life through the critical and objective eye of the camera. His story with Diane Keaton did not work out well? And there they are, together, telling us about the story of an unsuccessful, but great, lovestory.
New York is the setting of Jasmine's flashbacks, of the high society parties in Manhattan, the patinate and glamorous life, and the fashion.
This last thing is what Jasmine materially brings with her when she moves to her sister in San Francisco: the Hermés bag is the physical hemblem of her link to the past.
The differences between the cities are also emblematic: New York and San Francisco are geographically opposed, East and West Coast, the difference of accent, of lifestyle, etc.
The memory of New York will always stay, but Jasmine has to let it go. The rest of the world is out there, and the City of Allen's childhood, and his work of the 70s has changed now, and so have we.
This is only my personal opinion, of course, but I took this as personal life-lesson, and one of the greatest.
Shall we now talk about Cate Blanchett? Not only her appearance and elegance make her stand out from the crowd, creating again a contrast between lifestyles: she shines next to the people in San Francisco, and when she suddenly finds the man who remembers her about the past (elegant, glamorous, rich), it doesn't work. She was not meant to go back to that kind of life, to be stuck in the perfect coverstory marriage. Jasmine has to fix a more important thing first: herself.
This is A Film.
The script: brilliant, humorous, modern, Allen.
The cast: Oscar performance by Cate Blanchett, great interpretation by the co-actors Alec Baldwin, Bobby Cannavale, Sally Hawkins and Louis C.K.
The directing: smooth, psychoanalytical, mixing the style of comedies and melodramas.
My last point, since I am not writing a long essay, concerns what I was mentioning about screenwriting in my previous post: http://artbookscinema.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/screenwriters-on-screenwriting-tony.html
Tony Gilroy said that to do this job one has to know human behaviour, have empathy.
Woody Allen, his anxietes, his fears impersonated by himself or projected on the characters, his deep study of psychoanalysis and philosophy just gave me one thought.
No wonder he has become one of the most established directors of the 20th Century, they say you either have it or you don't, and he definitely has it and even more.
In conclusion, dear Mr. Allen, I will be waiting for the next great picture. Thank you.
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