January 4, 2009

One can call anything art, I suppose. But is it genuine? Joe Queenan at the Guardian thinks not, in the case of Woody Allen:

Particularly in light of Allen’s subsequent romantic adventures, Manhattan now seems like a profoundly autobiographical and oddly creepy motion picture. It is basically a story about a neurotic, unattractive middle-aged man who wants what most middle-aged men cannot have, and what middle-aged men should not even want: someone to screw who is still in high school. When Allen the director wishes to cue a specific emotion, he doesn’t do it through words or images or even the actors’ facial expressions; he does it by conjuring up the pre-fab emotions triggered by Gershwin’s already assimilated music. This is the reason film trailers regularly contain Motown hits that are never actually heard in the movies: it’s a clever ploy to engender feelings among baby boomers that the movies themselves may have a hard time evoking, because the movies themselves are no good.

Manhattan is thought of as a classic by those who grew up with Woody Allen, but subsequent generations, such as my twentysomething children, seem baffled by his appeal. His movies revolve around his endearing annoyingness, but to them, Allen is merely a whining jerk, and, because of the sexual themes in his movies, a bit gross. Particularly in light of Allen’s subsequent romantic adventures, Manhattan now seems like a profoundly autobiographical and oddly creepy motion picture. It is basically a story about a neurotic, unattractive middle-aged man who wants what most middle-aged men cannot have, and what middle-aged men should not even want: someone to screw who is still in high school. Because the indefatigably self-involved, preposterously self-deluding director continued to cast himself as a romantic lead opposite gorgeous actresses such as Julia Roberts for the next two decades, it is easy to forget that his onscreen liaison with borderline jailbait Mariel Hemingway already seemed disturbing in 1979. For years, detractors have been asking: who does this guy think he is? A more relevant question might be: who does this guy think he was?

This is where Gershwin comes in. Manhattan the film revolves around a pair of megalomaniac male schmucks (Allen, Michael Murphy) paired with a small, tidy harem of female victims (Hemingway, Diane Keaton, Anne Byrne). At some level, we are expected to like the schmucks, or at least commiserate with them. But as we get further and further away from the era when Allen was revered, his characters seem less and less sympathetic, and their boho problems less and less compelling. Manhattan the city still looks terrific, however, and Gershwin’s music still sounds great. This is the most appealing thing about the film today – the shots of the Manhattan skyline with Rhapsody in Blue playing in the background. No wisecracks. No neurotics. Nobody talking about Jung.

Martin Scorsese, also a native New Yorker and a far better film-maker, has always used music as a central element in his films. From the opening credits of Raging Bull, featuring the main theme from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, to the opening chords of Gimme Shelter in his latest film, The Departed, Scorsese uses music to set a mood, define an era, propel the film forward. But music does not upstage the images; music is neither a distraction nor a sleight-of-hand trick.

In his best films – GoodFellas, Casino, Mean Streets, The Departed, all of which deal with gangsters – the pop music playing in the background while the thugs hammer out their deals or bludgeon their rivals sounds like the kind of music that should be playing in such situations. He isn’t trying to impress anyone; the music is there because it serves a function. Unlike fussy directors who use overbearing soundtracks, showcasing Phillip Glass’s minimalist twaddle or Leonard Cohen’s morose ballads or ululating Moroccan choirs to make their films seem more important, Scorsese uses music that sounds like the music his characters would listen to.

One of the most memorable scenes in Manhattan has Allen and Keaton gazing at one of the city’s amazing bridges in the small hours as Gershwin flows along in the background. Allen says: “This is just a great city. I don’t care what anybody says.” Well, duh. But who is the “anybody” to whom Allen is referring? Who specifically doesn’t think New York is a great city? Osama bin Laden? The fact is, framing the Manhattan skyline at night with George Gershwin playing at top volume in the background is a cheap trick, like framing Big Ben at midnight with the entire population of Great Britain singing God Save the Queen, and then asking if anyone is unimpressed. Nobody needs Woody Allen to tell them what a great city New York is. Gershwin told them 50 years earlier.

Exactly. By the way, Allen’s son with Mia Farrow, Ronan Seamus Farrow (a son Allen cruelly said he never wanted and largely ignored except to name him after a suitcase), commented on the oddly creepy event Manhattan foreshadowed:

Allen and Farrow’s only biological son, Seamus Farrow, said of Allen: “He’s my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression. I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent…I lived with all these adopted children, so they are my family. To say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children.”

Allen asks the question in his movies, what’s it all about? and never comes up with any satisfactory answers. Perhaps he should have asked his own son, he seems to have some pretty decent ideas.

And even a broken clock gets it right once in a while. There is one Woody Allen movie that doesn’t creep me out and leaves out the “I Love New York” cliches. Not so coincidentally the one movie Allen made that I like did not feature Allen in an acting role. He never appeared in The Purple Rose of Cairo, giving Mia Farrow a rare chance to shine. It’s one of her best performances.



Reference
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Quotations
Life

"Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear." ~ Zora Neale Hurston

"Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you... you have got to not forget to laugh." ~ Katharine Hepburn

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song." ~ Maya Angelou

"If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time." ~ Edith Wharton

"Mistakes are the dues one pays for a full life." ~ Sophia Loren

Women

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." ~ Virginia Woolf

"Woman must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression." ~ Margaret Sanger

"Probably, hanging onto the past brings more destruction than any other single cause... It's the Muslim fundamentalists who worship the past and ignore the reformist spirit with which Muhammad viewed women. It's the backward-looking Christian literalists who interpret religious teachings in a way that consolidates their power." ~ Gloria Steinem

"'Inherent differences' between men and women, we have come to appreciate, remain cause for celebration, but not for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual's opportunity." ~ Ruth Bader Ginsberg

"Feminism is and always has been about women acting in the world as full-fledged citizens, as real participants in the world of ideas and policy and history." ~ Susan Faludi

"...remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors... If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." ~ Abigail Adams

"Bloody treason, murderous act
Not by women were designed.
Bells o'erthrown nor churches sacked
Speak not ill of womenkind."
~ Gearoid Iarla Fitzgerald

"We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room. We want an equal share in government and we mean to get it." ~ Bella Abzug

"Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"There cannot be true democracy unless women's voices are heard. There cannot be true democracy unless women are given the opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives." ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Of my two 'handicaps' being female put more obstacles in my path than being black." ~ Shirley Chisholm

"Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?" ~ Zora Neale Hurston

"If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place." ~ Margaret Mead

Nature

"Eventually, all things merge into one; and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs..." ~ Norman Maclean

"There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example - where had they gone?... It was a spring without voices." ~ Rachel Carson

"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." ~ St. Francis of Assisi

"I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men." ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but He cannot save them from fools." ~ John Muir

"We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it... Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love." ~ George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

"Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life." ~ Rachel Carson

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." ~ John Muir

Freedom

"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood of ideas in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." ~ John F. Kennedy

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." ~ James Madison

"When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion." ~ C. P. Snow

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." ~ Albert Einstein

"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." ~ William Pitt

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~ Benjamin Franklin

"No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise." ~ Marian Anderson

"Being pro-choice is trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself and her family, and not entrusting that decision to anyone wearing the authority of government in any regard." ~ Hllary Rodham Clinton

Truth

"Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

"If somebody tells you you ought to quit, it's because they're afraid you won't." ~ Bill Clinton

"The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." ~ Robert F. Kennedy

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Find things that shine and move toward them." ~ Mia Farrow

"The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me? But the good Samaritan reversed the question: If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Abuse of Power

"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth in a few hands, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis

"Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things." ~ Russell Baker

"O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; But it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." ~ William Shakespeare

"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." ~ Thomas Jefferson

Violence

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"When men talk about defense, they always claim to be protecting women and children, but they never ask the women and children what they think." ~ Patricia Schroeder

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"What difference does it make to the dead whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" ~ Mohandas Gandhi

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind... War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." ~ John F. Kennedy

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." ~ Jesus

"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?" ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." ~ Mohandas Gandhi

"The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hypocrisy

"And thus I clothe my naked villany with odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil." ~ William Shakespeare

"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing... in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men... But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret..." ~ Jesus

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, ... legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion, but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law." ~ Thomas Paine

"I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right.... There is no place in this country for practicing religion in politics." ~ Barry Goldwater

Politics

"I never was surer of my position that no self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her political rights." ~ Susan B. Anthony

"All political movements are like this - we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility." ~ Doris Lessing

"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." ~ Adlai Stevenson

"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." ~ H.L. Mencken

Pretended Patriotism

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." ~ George Washington

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!" ~ Albert Einstein

"True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else." ~ Clarence Darrow

"When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." ~ George Orwell

"To (say) that we are to stand by the president right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but it's morally treasonable to the American public." ~ Theodore Roosevelt
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