Blue Jasmine

Down And Out In San Francisco

Here comes another Woody Allen movie, headed straight for another Oscar accolade. Combined with a bravura performance by Cate Blanchett, you'd have to say somebody is going to collect the golden statue on the big night.

Here is the usual spoiler alert.

What's Good About It

Cate Blacnhett, Alec Baldwin and the script. The directing in this one is a bit prosaic, but that's not bad because it puts Cate Blanchett front and centre and lets her do her thing. It is well cast and zips along nicely. The guys from 'Boardwalk Empire' rock in this movie.

It's a very tidy Woody Allen film and I should like it more. But I don't like it as much as his other films.

What's Bad About It

Maybe it's a little too pat.

There were even more acid observations to be made about such characters but Woody Allen seems to go easy with the poison pen in parts. He could have been meaner. He's certainly meaner about the working class. The narrative contempt towards Bobby Cannavale's Chili is pretty mean, while Andrew Dice Clay's Augie is just as mean and a touch patronising. Yes, it's Jasmine's view, but it's also Woody Allen's view that is familiar to us from other movies such as 'Stardust Memories'. In Stardust Memories, he has the self-deprecating humour to say "It's all luck. Look at me. If I were born in Poland instead of Brooklyn, I'd be a lampshade by now."

There are no such re-balancing remarks in this film. It seems Woody Allen hates the lumpenproletariat even more than he hates the moneyed chattering classes.

What's Interesting About It

Woody Allen's unlike a lot of American directors in that he regularly shows class separation as a feature of American society. The traditional American cinema view of class is that it doesn't matter if you come from the wrong side of the tracks, if you do well in your chosen area, and you have exceptional talent and make it, then the success is what validates you. Woody Allen persistently pits the middle class and immigrant class against the wealthy and financially independent class. This trend was more pointed in the late American period of his work before he set off to make pictures in London, Paris, Barcelona, Rome and so on. Now, back in America with this picture, he's taken up exactly where he left off.

Both Jasmine and Hal inhabit a the rarefied world of high finance of Wall Street, with domiciles on Park Avenue. They are so rarefied it is not even clear they feel they have a cultural connection to any demographic except the defining characteristic of having money. It is this centripetal pull of money that essentially makes and breaks the marriage and thus sets the story in motion. It is clear through the flashbacks that Hal is willing to do dodgy and down right ethically wrong things to get ahead, and that Jasmine is entirely complicit with these choices by simply claiming ignorance and turning a blind eye.

On that level, Woody Allen's indictment of the hypocrisy of the moneyed class is pointed. The only reason Hal is undone is because jasmine is willing to go to the FBI and divulge what she knows. In a sense, they are beyond authority - and only the suicidal inclination of one of the members of the class will bring about justice. It reminds us of the observation that Rome didn't fall through its own chaos an corruption, that it took a barbarian horde to do it; and yet somebody let the barbarians through the gate.

Education As Part Of The Entitlement

Woody Allen is always pointed sceptical of the value of education. In various guises through his career, his characters have made pro-education speeches and gestures but ultimately they get undone by events in his films. It was the central feature of the dynamic in both 'Annie Hall' and 'Manhattan' and is a trope that gets repeated in countless other films. Thus, when Jasmine claims she wants to go back to school to become an interior decorator, there is something quite ironic about that desire. She feels she is entitled to live a certain lifestyle and do it through doing what she would like to do, and that these things are underpinned by something so simple as getting a qualification form an online course.

What is interesting in this assembly is that Woody Allen himself is a varsity drop out and clearly he hasn't had to go back to that machinery of entitlement, but he seems to be acutely aware that awarding of qualifications and degrees forms the foundation of the wealthy classes. You don't really get an education to better yourself; you get an education so you can fit into the moneyed society. While it is not a particularly revolutionary insight, the pointed manner in which Woody Allen shows us this trope suggests he is deeply critical of the institution of tertiary education in America.

That is to say according to the Allen ethos, education is a terrible thing, but the only thing worse than having education is not having an education.

The Problem With The Proles According To Woody

I mentioned above that he was rough on the working class. The contempt runs like this: Augie and Ginger win money in lotto. They lose that money to Hal who is essentially a corporate raider with no conscience. The film carries on as if the wealth Ginger and Augie dream of, are not only beyond their capability as human beings but that they do not deserve to even dream such dreams. Underpinning this notion is that true wealth can only be built through talent, hard work, and a touch of unethical behaviour. Luck, as represented by the lottery win, does no come into it. This may indeed be true. Nonetheless it seems to repeat itself in the story of Ginger's affair with a sound engineer who turns out to be married, that even aspiring for a better partner is beyond her station.

The film is hard on Jasmine. At the same time it is even harder on the working class. It echoes the remark made towards the end of 'To Rome With Love' that it is better to be a celebrity than not. If there is any conclusive comment to be made, it seems it is better to be wealthy than not, and that is the be all and end all.