LOOK, I’M
WOODY. HOWDY, HOWDY, HOWDY.
Starring
WOODY ALLEN, even more so than usual
Y
Yeah Yeah Yeah, we don’t believe you. Your
whole life’s an act, you’re a compulsive liar/masturbator and your hair makes a
weird triangle shape that distracts us when you deliver your soliloquies. This
isn’t autobiographical? All these memories? Stardust
Memories? Everybody back up, there’s a truck full of bullshit flashing its
lights. Stardust Memories is another
whirling dervish clusterfuck searching for answers in a bastard world, but this
time Woody slows the camera down at certain points and catches the beauty that
he’s missing by spending all his time up there in the brain. The lingering shot
of Charlotte Rampling towards the end is the clincher, but before that we have
aliens, gun smoke, ugly fans and Tony Roberts’ drawl to lead us gently through
another essay on how unhappy the director is, each deviation more entertaining than
the last. It’s a film that strips away the flimsy layers of a man living his
life in the public gaze, from the indifference of his fellows to the passion of
his lovers, revealing a scared little boy underneath who’s desperately trying
to find his place in a world he doesn’t really understand, but has written
endless one-liners about in an effort to stoke the void. What chucks this out
from a lot of Allen’s other work is the strength of the images he puts forward,
in many cases drawn from the lessons learnt watching Fellini films in a black
room with no one else but his squealing ego. The opening train scene, all
silent screams and drooling emptiness is a masterpiece in meta-upon-meta-upon-meta
commentary, almost making you wish you could watch the film that his
pretentious persona had produced (hint: you can.), whilst the latter
relationship tangles carry an aloofness and dedication to imagination rather
than love that distance the piece from his more gushy effusions. It’s another
film about art and the point of it all. It’s very, very clever and it knows
more than you do, but its letting you see its crib sheets and helping you
through the algorithms. It bears repeated watching. It’s fifty-eight light
years away from Whatever Works, and
damning evidence of how a human mind can degrade over a few decades. Watch it
and weep.
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