Sunday, August 04, 2013
True Blue
I saw Blue Jasmine today. It was a little bit of a wristcutter, but really, really well done. I'd heard a lot of positive things about it; as it turns out, they were all accurate, but oversimplified. It's really hard to describe accurately what Woody Allen has done here. Frankly, it doesn't even much seem like a Woody Allen movie. Half of it is sort of a riff on A Streetcar Named Desire, with the other half made up of flashbacks that essentially show you how the Blanche DuBois character unraveled the way she did. So it's almost an improvement on the classic it's based on, because it provides context for conduct that otherwise would be fairly inexplicable, and certainly unsympathetic. It also helps that Cate Blanchett is astounding; as cringeworthy as some of her behavior is, you actually do feel for her throughout the movie. You understand how successful she has been living with illusions as opposed to reality and why she might continue to live that way, even as it (spoiler alert!) drives her to madness. She actually brings a fair amount of comedy to it, too, even though I watched about half of the movie wincing, with my face in my hands.
So yeah, I recommend it. I still overall prefer the old school funny Woody Allen movies (Sleeper is my jam, yo), but the old man has some fight in him yet.
I saw Blue Jasmine today. It was a little bit of a wristcutter, but really, really well done. I'd heard a lot of positive things about it; as it turns out, they were all accurate, but oversimplified. It's really hard to describe accurately what Woody Allen has done here. Frankly, it doesn't even much seem like a Woody Allen movie. Half of it is sort of a riff on A Streetcar Named Desire, with the other half made up of flashbacks that essentially show you how the Blanche DuBois character unraveled the way she did. So it's almost an improvement on the classic it's based on, because it provides context for conduct that otherwise would be fairly inexplicable, and certainly unsympathetic. It also helps that Cate Blanchett is astounding; as cringeworthy as some of her behavior is, you actually do feel for her throughout the movie. You understand how successful she has been living with illusions as opposed to reality and why she might continue to live that way, even as it (spoiler alert!) drives her to madness. She actually brings a fair amount of comedy to it, too, even though I watched about half of the movie wincing, with my face in my hands.
So yeah, I recommend it. I still overall prefer the old school funny Woody Allen movies (Sleeper is my jam, yo), but the old man has some fight in him yet.
