see how many wrote this film off just as they've written off most of Allen's recent comedic endeavors.
However, as the months wore on, I couldn't help but revisit this particular film. Not because it was particularly good, but because there was something unspoken in the presentation that lent itself to a discussion on the context of intimacy on screen.
Woody Allen once stated that “my one regret in life is that I am not someone else.” Whatever Works finds Allen once again in his familiar New York City allowing just that to take place. Larry David takes over the Woody Allen character as Boris Yelnikoff, a neurotic, misanthropic genius, who, since a failed suicide attempt, has sequestered himself off from the majority of human contact. Boris now spends his days hobbling around Little Italy, eating with the only two friends he has left, and criticizing the intellectual integrity of almost everyone he meets.
- Years pass when Boris, now content with his reclusive lifestyle, arrives home to findMelody (Evan Rachel Wood), a twenty one year old woman from Mississippi, lying in the gutter by his doorstep. After much pleading Boris reluctantly allows Melody in for a meal and a warm place to sleep. One night turns into two, acquaintances become lovers and soon Boris has himself a live-in girlfriend. Melody, being Boris intellectual inferior begins to take on his cynical world view and, in a page right out of Chekov's The Darling, slowly loses sight of the uncorrupted southern belle she once was.
- Ultimately, that is what Allen's film is about: his beloved New York's ability to change people into a side of themselves they have suppressed their entire lifetime. A revelation of true-self catalyzed by environment. Such is evident when both Melody's mother and father arrive to 'save her' only to find themselves seduced by 'blue-state' intellectualism, art and sexuality.Though, Melody ultimately leaves Boris for greener, less misanthropic pastures, our hate-able protagonist still manages to find love after a second suicide attempt finds him flying out of his window and on to the girl of his dreams.
- Though a well worn message to be sure, one expects that in the hands of a proven filmmaker such as Woody Allen, the emotional transitions wouldn't be treated as flippantly as they are. What is presented is almost a revelatory assembly line. Characters enter, their lives are changed, they move on. It isn't long before this formula digresses into tedium. In terms of performance, David is spectacularly scathing as Boris, so much so in fact, that at times it feels as if Allen's own return to the city has somehow revealed a side of himself he had hereto kept from the cinematic arena. Boris expounds in long hateful diatribes which, amusing at first, soon begin to make one feel a bit uneasy. Is this how Allen views the rest of the world? Maybe, maybe not; as Boris' character is written and subsequently acted in such an 'over the top' manner that it is hard to truly take anything he says seriously. The same, however, goes for the rest of the film as well.
- In Whatever Works, Allen makes no attempt to hide the artifice of his medium. David often finds himself directly addressing the audience, ranting on topics from anthropology to politics, and at times, almost expecting a response. This however, is only the beginning as the rest of the characters that Allen chooses to populate his world have such an inherent theatricality to them that by the closing credits you almost expect a curtain call. Both Melody's mother and father, played respectively by Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley Jr., are written as caricatures. An inadvertent political commentary on how a seemingly out of touch New York intellectual may view his mid-western brethren.
- Even Boris' apartment never feels like a home, so much as it does an elaborate, meticulously designed set piece. Everything from the lighting to the camera placement serve to suggest a much larger arena outside the performance space. The result finds the actors (whom are viewed as such far more so than they are as 'characters') sharing screen time with the performances occurring behind the camera.
- Such theatricality is amusing, but at times slightly off-putting. Allen keeps the audience at arms length, never making them a part of the world, but more an observer (much like Boris himself). An approach to filmmaking such as this would come off as frustrating, or perhaps even unintentionally sloppy if Allen didn't make his intentions abundantly clear in the first scene of the film. From Boris' first direct address the viewer is made aware of themselves as an audience, and thus a separation between our world and the world on screen is established. A technique such as this is somewhat refreshing in a cinematic landscape that is often, with improvements in 3-D technology, quite literally trying to bring us into the world on screen.
- However, and quite unfortunately this style of presentation works against the moments in the film in which Allen aims to create a feeling of genuine intimacy. What results are intimate moments that are never feel truly intimate, because all the moments preceding them serve to remind the viewer that they are sharing the experience with everyone else in the room, as well as those behind the camera working to capture the experience, collectively 'the audience.' Here Allen walks a fine line; attempting to balance the artifice inherent to the theatricality of his presentation and the love he clearly feels for the characters he has written. It is in this attempted balance that the film truly fails. Unable to reconcile these two aspects of his film, Allen ultimately produces a piece that is tonally and emotionally inconsistent, leaving the audience with an unsatisfying, hollow experience. Artifice without commentary, and intimacy against the backdrop of artifice.
