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Not to say that there aren’t daring mercurial genre-hoppers among well-known directors—but there is another breed altogether, typified by someone like the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, who were masters of constancy, who had an nearly singular devotion to a particular set of themes, which were played out similar settings with a recognizable style and thus always bore the
unmistakable stamp of the director.

Woody Allen may or may not (probably may not) be in same league as the Japanese master, but the point now is to judge Allen on his own merits, against the rest of his own oeuvre. How does “Melinda and Melinda” stack up in this regard?

“Melinda and Melinda” is based on the question of whether human existence is tragedy or comedy. In case the suspense is killing you, here’s the answer: neither, because life shows elements of both, intertwined each other.

Writing that last sentence had about the same soporific effect that realizing this was the entire message of movie had on viewing the remainder of the film. Allen’s touch has become much lighter in recent films. Gone are the flourishes of absurdist humor and pithy one-liners. What we have left is Allen in dialogue with himself. So is there a point in even reviewing this movie? Remember when Allen’s neurotic characters were actually lovable because they were so human. There was a time, or at least in my fading memory, there were moments that watching Allen’s films made us all New Yorkers in a way that terrorist attacks could not. Without trivializing the latter, Allen’s films had the ability to make us all (middle or upper class) New Yorkers in spirit. That was what he did, and at the top of his game, did it just about better than anyone else could.

But back to the film: there are two Melindas—the tragic one and the comic one, a neurotic chain-smoking babbler with straggly hair and a perky with a short energetic hair cut who has her shit together. She waltzes into or back into the lives of the other characters. Husbands and wives begin to fight, divorce, find other lovers, betraying their friends in the process. Typical Allen territory. So let’s just cut to the chase. Will Ferrell is goofy, Chiwetel Ejiofor is charming, Rahda Mitchell, in the title role…well, what to say about her?
Mitchell is a good actress, Allen’s heroines are never weak in that regard—but the problem is that they are Woody Allen heroines and that neurotic shtick can really get on the reviewer’s nerves. In the end, you can hardly sympathize with them when they attempt to jump out the window or say that they are in love. In fact, Will Ferrell’s character falling in love with Melinda the Comic is about the only compelling love story in the whole movie.

I believe that Woody Allen is too veteran and intelligent a filmmaker to believe that he is creating characters that we could really care about. In as much as we do care about them, it is due the gift of individual actors to inject some kind of life into the movie that the script cannot. That said, I don’t think that Allen is purposely selling a watered down, boilerplate version of himself. There’s something to be said for a lighter taste, even if that means less meaningful movie calories. Allen is much older now than he was when he started making films. There’s no need for him to continue to write punch-lines, make fun of New York intellectuals or Jews; he might not even have to ever act in his movies ever again. Similarly, there’s no need for him to move into some uncharted movie territory, switch genres, become an even more “serious” filmmaker, win another Oscar, etc. Woody Allen can now make movies about what he’s thinking about now (which is related to what he thought about in the past), and what moves him now, about the world that he lives in now.

A lot of people (myself included) have perhaps felt that there is no longer any need to see the new Woody Allen film, but another way of putting it might be that Allen has achieved a certain degree of artistic freedom as an American auteur that few us could even dream about. Is that tragic or comic? You tell me.

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originally posted: 06/28/05 11:46:41
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