A new Woody Allen movie is a big event. I don’t care what you think. Its big. Even though there’s one every year and has been since Bananas in about 1657. When Woody was just 12 and still married to his sixth wife’s god-daughter’s neice. The man’s love life has been almost as erratic as his films. But I’ll always see them. I have to. I’m driven. Possessed. According to drug addicts, the first hit of heroin is such an incredible high that you spend the next 30 years trying to get it back. Well as a Woody addict, my first movie, and I can’t remember whether it was Play it again, Sam, or Bananas, or Take the Money and Run, was just such a ‘hit’, a ‘high’, such a drug, such a fantastic experience that I’ve spent the last 40 years trying to relive it.
It was easy at first, the comedy classics were simply brilliant. All of them. Right up to Annie Hall. Then along came Manhattan and changed it all. Showed Woody’s more serious side, turned the ever-present neuroses from farce into introspection, outlined the fragility of relationships, particularly inappropriate ones. Which Woody loves. Old men, young women. Art imitating his life. Or predicting its future.

I see virtually all of them. I have to. He’s a hero, a god, a sleazy old man maybe but the most talented individual in the movie industry since Pele starred in ‘Goal’.

This week Blue Jasmine came out. Ooooohhhhh. I called the friends we were booked to see last night and, basically, told them we’re going to see it. I don’t fucking care what they want to do. Oh, you don’t particularly like Woody? Oh. Well tough shit, you’re going, I’ve fucking booked and you’re paying for the tickets. At the Phoenix. The world’s oldest cinema. Ok, maybe not but an independent movie house in constant use since 1910. And it seemed everyone I know was also there last night. They call it a ‘cinema club’ and I know why.

But they were all there because this film has had the most amazing reviews. From everyone. The Jewish Chronicle gave it 5 stars. But they would, they give any jewish-connected film 5 stars. The Times did likewise, every paper, every critic, every comment was outstanding, superlative, wondrous, ‘Woody at his best’, amazing stuff, brilliant, wonderful, ‘like Spurs on a good day’ (like half of yesterday), sensational film. Cate Blanchett Oscar-tipped.
I should have seen the writing on the wall.
It was a brilliant film. It was the study of a woman cracking up. A brilliant study. Amazingly played by La Blanchett. She will win the Oscar. Possibly even the FA Cup, so incredible was her performance.
But it wasn’t funny. Which is ok. I’m not so facile, stupid and banal as most people seem to think. I can handle ‘serious’, I can do ‘tragic’, but the film let me down. Without the ‘funny’ there just needed to be more… more… more something, other than the amazing Cate. Others were great in it too, but it was curiously unfulfilling.
Oh well, there’ll be another one next year. No point getting too upset.
Happy sunday
A xxxx