WHATEVER WORKS

Written and Directed by Woody Allen
Starring Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley Jr.


Boris Yellnikof: On paper, we’re ideal but life isn’t on paper.

WHATEVER WORKS is not just the title of Woody Allen’s 41st film. It is also clearly a philosophy that he has applied toward his own life here on earth. Like many an Allen project in the past, this one makes no apologies for mirroring his own life experiences. As Allen does not appear too often in his own films anymore, there is ordinarily an Allen replacement to speak his voice and to do so with just the right balance of neurosis and paranoia. In this case, another famously awkward neurotic, Larry David (TV’s “Curb your Enthusiasm”), has stepped into Allen’s shoes, as Boris Yellnikof. With a name like that, it is no wonder he is such fatalist. At this stage in his life, he is divorced, living alone and loving hating humanity whenever he can. After he meets a 21-year-old Southern runaway named Melodie St. Ann Celestine (Evan Rachel Wood), his life becomes unrecognizable and he must now make whatever his life was work once again.


After a jaunt around Europe, Allen has returned to the city that he is synonymously associated with, New York City. New York now, after some time apart, is no longer romanticized but rather this is the New York that houses all of those who cannot find their place anywhere else. Allen seems to be taking it even one step further to suggest that New York changes those who spend any lengthy period of time there, whether they want to or not. Melodie, who in just her name is inherently more whimsical than Boris, has come to New York to escape her repressive Southern upbringing. Unbeknownst to her though, she has found herself in an even more restricted environment, Boris’s apartment. With no place to go, she weasels her way into Boris’s life and yes, they do eventually become involved romantically. The almost 50-year difference between them is all too easily linked to Allen’s own relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, who is more than 30 years his junior. WHATEVER WORKS was written in the late 70’s though so the parallels are merely circumstantial and Allen is smart enough to never show the pair in any overtly romantic expression. Their relationship is more symbolic than romantic anyway.


In last year’s triumph, VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA, Allen had a noticeably more relaxed approach to filmmaking and he brought that back with him from what seemed like a very good vacation. He experiments with breaking the fourth wall as Boris randomly addresses the audience about the story, or more specifically his take on that story. He is the only one capable of doing so and even his onscreen colleagues seem to think he is losing his mind a little. David is strong enough to make it work though. David plays Boris with his own brand of pessimistic social discomfort rather than trying to recreate the character that Allen made famous. That said, David’s signature character may not be what it is without Allen’s influence to begin with so the nod to history is present regardless. And with Melodie, a character who wants so much to embrace the beauty of life, there to counterbalance, Allen the director takes a decidedly optimistic favouring and exposes pessimism as mistaken insight when it is nothing more than avoidance.


WHATEVER WORKS will not disappoint Allen fans but Allen detractors will find plenty to pick apart. With an open mind though, anyone can appreciate this humour. It is an advanced version of Allen’s signature wit and structure where he even revisits some of the relationship themes he explored in ANNIE HALL. No one person in a relationship knows what is better for the couple or for themselves and Allen seems finally rested enough to accept that he doesn’t know any better himself. For whatever it’s worth, WHATEVER WORKS, works.

THE WRESTLER

Written by Robert D. Siegel
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Starring Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood

For more information on THE WRESTLER, just click on the title anywhere you see it in this review.


Randy “The Ram” Robinson: I’m an old broken down piece of meat and I deserve to be alone.

I was never a professional wrestling fan as a child. My brother was and so I occasionally caught the weekly shows because I was too lazy to get off the couch when he would watch them. I never understood the appeal. How could grown men rolling around on the floor together in an obviously choreographed battle appeal to the straight male? Is wrestling the straight man’s ballet? And though I never understood why, my brother and legions of other men (and women) would watch religiously to see who would be smashed with a chair while the referee was lying unconscious on the floor. Amidst all of the spectacle though, it is easy to forget that the men in tights put on pants just like the rest of us when the show is done and go home to their lives. Darren Aronofsky is here to remind us of this and to show us the softer or more human side of THE WRESTLER.


From the moment it begins, with an opening credit montage highlighting the career accomplishments of former wrestling superstar, Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke) over a throwback hair-metal song, you know that you are in for a dirty ride. The Ram has got to be in his sixties at this point. It has been twenty years since he played Madison Square Garden and now he is the main attraction at local wrestling matches that are put up in high school gymnasiums and workout centers. He has no one of significance in his life; he can barely afford his trailer park home; and the steroids and numerous other drugs he has consumed and is still currently consuming have taken their toll on his weathered body. Yet still, he soldiers on. As long as he has his wrestling, he has purpose. Then one day, even that is taken away. Who does a man become when he can no longer be who he has always known himself to be?


THE WRESTLER is Aronofsky’s finest work. It marks the first time in his major filmmaking career where he did not direct a script that he himself wrote. That credit goes to novice writer, Robert D. Siegel. Siegel’s script is bare, honest and frank. It follows The Ram during this hard transitional period of his life and Aronofsky follows behind as though he were filming some trashy reality TV show. After all, this is a dirty story that goes back and forth between wrestling rings, strip clubs and trailer parks. Aronofsky does not sensationalize though. Instead, his newfound simplicity allows the humanity of all on screen to flow freely and freely is exactly how it flows from this immensely talented cast. Marisa Tomei plays The Ram’s love interest, a stripper named Cassidy. Not only does she look incredible working the stage but her off stage persona is a great mix of tender and tired. It is a welcome reminder that Tomei is one of today’s most underrated actresses. And then of course there is the wrestler himself. Rourke is revelatory. He is lonely and broken but still picking himself up and doing whatever needs doing. To watch a man of his age endure what he does in the ring makes you root hard for him but the horrifying violence also inspires intense sympathy.


THE WRESTLER is about purpose. After Aronofsky’s last film, THE FOUNTAIN, failed and fell apart quite publicly, it would stand to reason that he may have been questioning his own purpose. Just like The Ram knows only how to be a wrestler though, Aronofsky has to be a filmmaker. Whatever confidence he may have lost has been forgotten as THE WRESTLER is a brave move away from the visual trickery and style he had become accustomed to. It is the natural simplicity of his new direction that makes THE WRESTLER so relatable, inspires great caring for its characters and solidifies it as Aronofsky’s best work.

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais
Directed by Julie Taymor


“Because the sky is blue, it makes me cry. Because the sky is blue.”

Staring at a blue sky for two hours is almost required viewing to settle your mind from the visually lost schizophrenia that is Julie Taymor’s ACROSS THE UNIVERSE. How else can you undo the damage from being subjected to an exhaustingly lengthy collage of overblown imagery at the hands of an over inflated ego? I can only imagine the horror that must have swept over the executives’ faces after screening this film for the first time. It has been widely publicized that Taymor entered a creative war over the final cut of this film with her producers who wanted to release their own cut of the film. They said the film needed more focus, less experimenting as she hid behind the shield of artistic integrity. Ordinarily, I would never side with any form of censorship but perhaps she should have left her bias in the car and taken a few of the tips that were perhaps being given to her in the best interest of her film. Maybe then, ACROSS THE UNIVERSE could have told a functional story that would have captured some attention, given it some ultimate meaning and made this all-Beatles musical the magical journey it so desperately wanted to be and could have been. Or maybe it would have been worse but I can’t see how.


ACROSS THE UNIVERSE tells the story, and I say that lightly, of a young lad named Jude (Jim Sturgess), who travels across the ocean to find his father. Find him he does in absolutely no time and then he just bounces around from here to there in pursuit of nothing at all. He meets a girl (Evan Rachel Wood) and falls in love; he gets a room in New York City and paints when everybody else is either going to war in Vietnam or protesting it. A bevy of other characters are randomly introduced, bring nothing to the whole (which is paper thin as it is) and then disappear after accomplishing just as much nothing. It is all so aimless; I’m surprised my neck doesn’t hurt more from all the shaking my head did in bewilderment. The style, which can only be described as a refusal to commit to any one style, only makes it more difficult to get taken in. As a viewer, the suspended disbelief necessary to enjoy a musical as one should still requires a firm foundation. Taymor tries to establish a gritty reality with Jude working the docks in Liverpool but the leap to where the music happens, and the magic is supposed to, is always different and seldom seems appropriate. I never thought I would be begging for plausibility in a musical but this was just ridiculous


While I commend Taymor for incorporating 90% on-location singing into this musical in an attempt to pump a more real quality into the practice, I want to sit her down to talk about some other basic concepts like character, meaning and purpose (concepts she so easily incorporated into her far superior FRIDA). Surely she has seen Baz Luhrmann’s MOULIN ROUGE. Luhrmann’s film employed the same musical technique to appropriate existing lyrical content (including some by the Beatles) and contextualized it within his story of forbidden lovers. The reason his film worked is because there was a solid story driving it forward and characters that were developed through that story and their songs. ACROSS THE UNIVERSE seems more interested in its high concept usage of the Beatles repertoire that characters seem to be included so that certain songs can be included. It is certainly lovely to see a young high school cheerleader sing a slowed down version of “I Wanna Hold your Hand” to herself about a fellow cheerleader, just as it is heartbreaking to watch a young boy caught in the streets of the Detroit riots singing “Let It Be” amidst the violence but both of these potentially powerful moments and strong performances are hollowed out by their complete lack of context. How can you be expected to care when you have no idea why this story is suddenly being told? And then to find out, there was really no significant point to begin with? Without purpose, all you have are a bunch of people singing old songs on screen.


At one point, more specifically when multiple Selma Hayek’s in nurse uniforms seductively administered drugs to war patients spinning around a medical ward to “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” I found myself wondering just how many Beatles songs were still left to be sung. When a film has no distinct purpose, it also has no clear ending in sight. I was beginning to fear that Taymor might actually turn me off the Beatles with this disaster but fortunately, the Beatles are timeless and genius and something so laughable as ACROSS THE UNIVERSE is not going to diminish their beauty. It’s like bearing witness to a bad karaoke performance of your favorite song; you cringe while it’s happening but once you hear it again for yourself, the mastery that was temporarily taken from it comes back in waves of vibrant colour and splashes of insight that touch your soul. The painful experience is easily forgotten and you ask yourself, across what universe?