More crimes and misdemeanours
It's no big news that Woody Allen has lost his mojo. I say this with all due respect. I pretty much adore every film he made between 1969 and 1994 (I even have time for Another Woman, September and Shadows and Fog). But after Bullets Over Broadway, even the most ardent fan of his New York stories had to admit things started to slide, with a little ray of hope that all might not be lost in Sweet and Lowdown. The fact that Allen, admirably, makes a film a year only serves to map the graph of his decline more vividly. Now we're at a stage where some of his films can't even find a distributor in this country. (His last film, Scoop, didn't even come out here, despite the fact that it was his second set in London - mind you, his first was the abominable Match Point, so I was glad not to see it.) Anyway, the third of his Woody Went on Holiday to London and All We Got Were These Three Lousy Films trilogy, Cassandra's Dream, is released on Friday, and I'm afraid I have seen it.
It has been memorably preceded by the Guardian's Simon Hattenstone actually telling co-star Ewan McGregor in an interview that he didn't like it. (This kind of interview is so rare in the asphyxiatingly over-choreographed world of film PR, I believe it actually caused quite a ripple in Wardour Street.) Then the same newspaper, as if on a mission, ran a Cannes piece by Joe Queenan blaming Europe for continuing to fund Allen's films when his own country stopped doing so years ago. (It's a funny read, if a little over-the-top to order.) So, here we go again: a nation does the opposite of wait with bated breath for the release of Cassandra's Dream, which is as flat and dull as its title is grand and portentous. Hattenstone doesn't blame McGregor, who has a crack at a 1960s Cockney accent that's almost passable in an utterly fictional sort of way - it's the script that's at fault: ploddy, arrhythmic, awkward, totally unlike the sound that comes out of English mouths. That and Allen's fabled preference for one or two takes per scene: very exhilerating for the actors who come to worship at the bespectacled shrine of Woody, but less edifying for the rest of us when characters stumble over dialogue in a way that's entirely different to the verite of improvised, naturalistic delivery. (In one scene, The Bill's John Benfield, a very decent actor, physically stumbles as he walks down the step into what is supposed to be his kitchen, in his family house. A more careful director would have retaken the scene, but not Woody Allen, who's busy thinking about his next film.) Incidentally, Colin Farrell - whom I was starting to like again after In Bruges - plays McGregor's mechanic brother with an Australian accent. (Did the director spot this and put him in for some extra voice coaching? He did not.)
It's not a comedy, I don't think. It's hard to tell. I think it's supposed to be a dark psychodrama asking how far you'd go to protect your family, with a bit of Greek tragedy shovelled on top, but it's so stagey and stilted, it's impossible to get inside a single character's mind. Even Sally Hawkins, who brings a rare energy to the part of Farrell's girlfriend, is stuck with dialogue like, "I'm worried about Terry. It's his mental health." I'm afraid I scribbled down some other offending snatches of dialogue, which for full, skull-cracking effect you'll have to imagine coming out of English mouths - or in McGregor and Farrell's case, Scottish and Irish playing English:
McGregor [to actress he's just been to a fringe theatre to see]: "I'm not an experienced playgoer."
Farrell [in reference to his status as a gambler]: "I'm just a two-bit player!"
Hayley Atwell [as the actress]: "Beyond your cool exterior I sense you're bluffing."
McGregor: "It's been a day of shattered hopes."
Who speaks like this? The dialogue in Allen's best films, although clever and sometimes "written", always seemed to flow so naturally from his characters' mouths. Why wasn't anyone brave enough to inform Woody that ordinary "working class" Londoners don't say "apartment", "movie industry" or "studio heads." (I know these characters were "working class" because they lived in houses with dull, 1970s wallpaper and bad, dowdy furniture, just like real "working class" people.) We'll forgive him the shot with Tower Bridge in the background, as David Cronenberg did the same in Eastern Promises, but a couple don't get up in a London pub and slow-dance to what's on the jukebox during the day. They don't smoke at the table in Claridge's and the Connaught either, not while people at the table are actually eating. I know the film was shot before the smoking ban, but surely it must have felt wrong when they were doing it.
It may seem as if I am taking pleasure in tearing this film apart. I'm not. I think it's desperately sad.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 12:15 PM
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I've not seen this, but i read that Guardian piece and it sums up today's Woody Allen nicely (while derailing the PR machine to great effect).
I did see Match Point, however, and I've told anyone who'll listen, it's one of the worst films I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of films.
Awful wooden acting, bizarre 1950s people living in a modern day London I barely recognise, a strange grasp of geography and a rubbish plot. American critics loved it, which shows how much they know about London.
The last one I really liked was Sweet And Lowdown, while Small Time Crooks was okay, but nothing special.
I hear his new Spanish-set one Vicky Christina Barcelona is the toast of Cannes. Is the jury made up of Americans?
It's a terrible shame he's lost it, and when you hear of another Woody Allen film your heart can't help but sink. Why do actors queue up to work with him? Are they blind?
Still, Annie Hall remains in my top five fave films of all time, so I'll always have that.
Oh lordy, it's Match Point all over again. Why do actors agree to appear in this rubbish? I know they all want to work with Allen, but even so...
I was captured by Woody sometime around 1980 (aged 14-ish) when BBC2 ran a season of his films, but my interest waned sharply in the early 90s. Like five-centres Annie Hall remains a lifetime favourite (along with Play it Again Sam which, having seen it performed on stage, is funnily enough really quite stagey).
I'd also read the grauniad interview and had to agree with something else it said, i.e. ewan mcgregor's star has waned somewhat since star wars. Now, I've never been a huge fan and I have to say that, as a Scot, I cringe every time he does his middle England accent. It sounds horrific to me - akin to Harrison Ford's "Scotch" accent in the last crusade. I was dragged along to see Miss Potter a few months ago and was biting my knuckle in rage every time EM opened his mouth, almost as much as i used to cringe at sean connery's attempts (although in his case the script often worked around his limitations by alluding to the character's celtic roots however improbable and out of context that might have been)
Thanks for the tip-off though I'll spend my cinema cash on something else - any suggestions? Indiana Jones? :-)
"The Bill's John Benfield"? According to IMDB he was in 4 episodes between 1991 and 2007. Hardly a regular face. By the way, whatever became of Reg Hollis?
Pouncing on an aside - I also had my opinion of Colin Farrell raised by In Bruges. Should it be reset its former low level?
The Match Point experience is bizarre. It seems to be a truly love or hate film to the point where you could be forgiven in thinking that there are two versions in circulation. Probably the worst film I have seen at the cinema for years, I was actually laughing out loud at the dialogue and delivery. Yet some people have told me it was wonderful, thrilling, moving and Woody's best in years?
Scoop is slightly better but not much. Again it's a constant string of infeasible dialogue delivered in the most ham fisted way. A bit odd that a film funded partly by the BBC couldn't get a cinema or DVD release in this country.
Yep, Everyone Says I Love You was the last one I actively liked - 1996 according to imdb - it did what it set out to do very nicely. But since then, it's been trending downwards, and I haven't bothered for several films.
Amongst the late good ones Manhattan Murder Mystery is hilarious but also apparently co-written by Marshall Brickman, the last time that happened. And of course, we'll always have Annie Hall.
I won't be going to see Cassandra's Dream. I used to love Woody Allen and even enjoyed Melinda and Melinda, but quite frankly, the 'English Woody Allen' scares me.
And after the recent career lows from Mike Leigh and Wong Kar Wai I don't think that I can cope anymore with normally fantastic directors letting me down. I suppose everyone is allowed their down periods (how generous of me!) but not seeing Cassandra's Dream feels like an act of self preservation.
Thank God the Coen Brothers are back on form.
Yes, Woody Allen is turning into a sort of Jewish Michael Jackson - hubristic auteur brought down by sex scandal; a compulsion to keep churning out work, whether anyone else likes it or not; surrounded by yes-men who just see him as a money-making machine.
Anyone who'e ever read any detailed interviews with Woody Allen (and there was that famous one by the Swedish guy, can't remember his name (Andrew?) which was published as a book by Faber) will know that he's decidely odd, no bad thing, and writes compulsively.
I think any of the upper-west side psychiatrists in his early films would point out that it's all just a displacement activity to avoid facing up to his own classically Jewish fears of mortality, death and now, mediocrity.
And while I'm here ... can I just agree about Ewan McGregor.
He has that annoying Tom Cruise habit of thinking a big toothy grin is a substitute for charisma.
I don't mind the fact that he's never really made any great films (I personally thought Trainspotting didn't do the book justice at all. And what else has Danny Boyle ever done? Used up all his feeble box of tricks in one movie)
But I can ignore all of that. What I find insufferable about McGregoor are his self-congratulatory laddish jaunts round the world with his own posh Bez in tow.
Just the two of them on motorbikes with nothing but the wind in their beards ... and the security guys, the camera crew, the medical team, translators and various technicians and hairdressers.
Bollocks to that. Spare me from these pampered public-school bad boys. He's just Guy Ritchie with stubble and a couple of brain cells.
Re : "what else has Danny Boyle done" - you need to see "Sunshine" and you need to see it soon.
Re : "whatevever happened to Reg Hollis" - the actor that played him was told that the character was to be written out, realised that this meant that he wouldn't be able to pay off the massive debts he had accrued gambling on-line between takes and attempted suicide.
I've seen Sunshine. I included that in the list of all the mediocre films he's done. Not a bad sci-fi movie for the first 60 minutes, though hugely derivative(mainly stealing stylistically from Soderberg's Solaris, which in itself is a remake of, I think,Tarkofsky.)
But the end? Dreadful.
As someone who has a strange fascination with films set in the world of newspaper, I bought the US DVD of Scoop and it's utterly dreadful. I mean really bad. Match Point, I can take or leave, but this is just so much worse.
There's a great cast, who surely all took the roles for scale. They're either underused, miscast, or quite likely, thoroughly embarrassed that they agreed to be in the film. It's easily the worst film I've seen in the last couple of years.
I suspect that even when the BBC, who co-funded this, get around to showing it, it'll be in post 11pm slot with no trailers at all. We're lucky we've been spared it.
I think what's also interesting is that it's barely being advertised as a Woody Allen film, but as "the new thriller from the director of Match Point". I expounded about this on my own blog if anyone cares to look:
Carnival Saloon: Stardust Memories
"when BBC2 ran a season of his films"
God, those were the days, when BBC2 used to run series of films of a certain genre or by a particular director. When I were a lad, they did it all the time, and it's where I was first introduced to Truffaut, Wenders, Fassbinder etc.
Why not any more?
John
American directors have a long history of making terrible mockney knock off films which are set in England and filtered through the skewed prism of someone with little knowledge of Britain and Britishness outside of the Tower of London and chimney sweeps.
The same way a London based director would do an appalling version of Boyz in the Hood the yanks should leave well alone and stick to blowing stuff up.
I haven't seen the film and am willing to believe it could be rubbish but, in slight defence, I have been known to stumble and even fall as I walk down my steps in my family house.
I thought Match Point was really good. Sure the London was romanticised beyond all recognition but the essence of the story was great. Am I the only one?
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