'Magic In The Moonlight'

"I Don't Mean To Be Didactic Or Facetious Or Anything But..."

You gotta take your hat off to Woody Allen. He keeps churning out these witty films filled with bon mots and clever observations. Veering towards the sardonic at times, nonetheless Woody Allen may be one of the great romantic auteurs of them all. Nobody keeps dedicating themselves to drama and love the way he does. He is to romantic comedy what Michael Bay is to multiple explosions with transforming robots. When you grow out of transforming robots and the opposite sex begins to interest you, then maybe Woody Allen's oeuvre is finally for you. The way cinema is going there seems to be more of transforming robots and much less of witty chamber pieces.

At this point in time, every Woody Allen film is a gift. the man is nearing 80 and while he may never retire he's much closer to the finish line than even the middle. There aren't too many of these left and once he's gone, there really won't be any more. You may suspect that he is somewhat shadowed by his own mortality, letting his thoughts be clouded by the ever growing sense of doom. Judging from this film, he really doesn't give a shit about dying - he's busy making films.

What's Good About It

Having exiled himself from Manhattan, the more recent series of Allen films are set across Europe where he can get money to make his films. Paris, London, Rome, Barcelona and now the south of France have become the backdrop for his films. In each instance the different location has offset the native New Yorker concerns and in some films they have not worked too well. In this one he manages to strike a perfect balance as he portrays a group of expats living it up in the South of France in the 1920s.

Colin Firth puts in a monumental performance where he digests he Woody Allen vernacular but spits it out in his own British clipped delivery, with an excellent assurance. He plays a man who believes in his own patter really well. It does not evoke Woody Allen's own voice or mannerisms, and yet conveys the full, brutal verbal gymnastics of the script. It's a remarkable performance by Firth - even greater than his turn as the stuttering King George VI for which he won awards. Well, he's even better in this movie.

The script is taut and yet filled with insults, sarcasm and irony that tickle the brain. The central conflict of appearance versus realty is deftly played and Emma Stone is pretty good as the seance leading psychic.

What's Bad About It

Sometimes Colin Firth's character Stanley gets a little too strident with his cutting remarks. The "too much" element creeps in and makes you think "well, if you said that in real life they'd never speak to you again so how could the story continue?" Some of the remarks are too funny that they make you lose sight of the story as it barrels on.

"Being too funny is a strange problem to have," Allen once said in an interview. "It's a bit like being too rich." Sometimes the jokes are a little too rich at the expense of the narrative. maybe it's a good problem to have.

Also... I normally don't notice this sort of thing too much but this is the rare film where continuity isn't quite right and the performances don't match well from wide shot to closer shots. Emma Stone is a big offender here which is surprising. She's normally very good. It suggests the filming was happening so quickly she wasn't getting her performances down and solidified fast enough.
It sort of makes the edits very bumpy.

As well as these technical things the glaring problem is the age gap between Firth and Stone as love interests. It is like Woody and Soon-yi Previn. It might be alright for them, but it looks a bit yuck on screen.

What's Interesting About It

I think Woody Allen's films number somewhere around 50 - I haven't counted and Wikipedia doesn't give you a straight answer. IMDB says it's 50. There are some heavily recurring motifs and types across those films, an they are in play in this film as well. The magician with tricks is one, as is the song ingenue; the concern with money, society, and frauds; tricks deception and subterfuge; snobbery and education, breeding and class; they are all aspects that Allen has used in previous films but they make an appearance as standard elements he uses to short cut his way to the themes he wants to got at.

The magician trope is interesting because it is central to the plot of 'Oedipus Wrecks' and Woody appears as a magician in 'Scoop'. This time it is Firth who plays a magician that reminds us of recent great films 'The Prestige' and 'The Illusionist' but somehow the plot never really comes back to the magic trick thing. There's no reason for Firth's character to be a magician any more than simply be a sceptical scientist. The problem is that a sceptical scientist might not have enough of a visual impact so instead it is the magician with lots of visual appeal.The appeal is nice, but you get the feeling that Woody is just winging it by making the character a magician.

Similarly, his preoccupation with the stars and the universe makes an appearance. In 'Annie Hall', the universe is expanding and one day will explode into nothing-ness. In this film, it is meaning to the young Stanley. The stars and universe are always there to give perspective that the affairs of human beings are largely insignificant in the scope of things. While it may be true, it's interesting that Allen continues to resort to variations of this motif.

Even the psychic is a recurring character. As recently as 'You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger' (one of his great misanthropic masterpieces), the plot revolved around a psychic and her crappy advice. Woody Allen is scathing about the kinds of people who peddle spiritualism as a token but he is oddly enamoured of featuring such people in his films - not always as villains or negative side characters - and then launching into meditations about the possibility of the metaphysical.

If you make enough things you worry about repeating yourself, but evidently Woody Allen isn't too worried about that issue. He simply redresses the figures like he would with cast members and shoves the recycled elements anew. It reminds us of Hitchcock and his tropes with psychiatrists and policemen.

A Comedy Classicist

'Appearance versus Reality' is one of those comedy tropes that go right back to Shakespeare. A good deal of classical drama and comedy is built with this trope. Moliere's plays are built on people with odd disguises or people pretending to be what they are not. A typical gag might be built on "A man dresses up as ____ in order to win the heart of a woman."
Depending on the blank and how big the gap is, you can gauge the kind of comedy big written. If you said doctor, you have Moliere - or a Robin Williams movie. If you said Woman, then you definitely have a Robin Williams movie.

In this film it is a woman who pretends to be a psychic and a magician who pretends to be an ordinary  businessman. It's enough fodder for Allen to spin a good 98minute film. It's so solid and complete, you marvel at how he gets it all done in the time. It's masterful.

He holds back on slapstick in this film and instead lets the structural elements and character comedy play out. Freed of having to play his own 'Woody Allen nebbish persona', Allen is able to direct a more interesting comedy. One can imagine how the film might have played out if a young Allen had played the magician and if Dianne Keaton had played the psychic. This film is much better for not being held by such trappings and expectations. This is making Woody Allen's late movies a lot more varied and far-ranging.

That being said, I really miss the Woody Allen who completely bollocked the establishment with 'Deconstructing Harry'. That was some seriously badass comedy writing.