BEFORE: I've got two other films with Kevin Bacon on the watchlist, but they seem like they belong squarely in the romance category, and I've got to start saving such films for next February. If I've calculated things out correctly, there's just no room for them this year anyway. Of course, the list is always shifting around, so I really have no way of knowing exactly how 2015 is going to play out, just a rough plan and a destination, with several ways of getting from here to there. But I'm 135 slots away from "Star Wars: Episode 7", with 129 of the 147 watchlist films forming a chain to get me there, plus 5 films I'm saving spaces for (6 if you count "Star Wars" itself) - that doesn't leave a wide margin for error, and it pushes at least 18 films into 2016, a number which is sure to grow a little every week. Now if I can just resist the temptation to tear the list apart again, I can get through the summer and finish out the year, and let the chips fall where they may for next year....
Last year I watched every Woody Allen film I hadn't seen before, which was 34 films, and that kept me busy for over a month - but even that didn't catch me up, because he released another film while I was watching his others. I can't really say I've seen them all until I've seen them all, and tonight I'm accomplishing that, at least until his newest film gets released in July. (He could really help me out, if he'd just stop making movies already.) I got this one last month, and found a space for it, right between two other Colin Firth movies. That was a simple decision, at least.
THE PLOT: A romantic comedy about an Englishman brought in to help unmask a possible swindle. Personal and professional complications ensue.
AFTER: Whoopsie, this one turned into something of a romance after all. Oh, well, I've still got some romances scheduled for 2015, these are films I need to bridge gaps between chains, or are likewise planned into slots between occurences of a particular actor.
I can't ignore the coincidental plot points this shares with "Where the Truth Lies" - Colin Firth plays an entertainer who meets a girl when she's very young, then meets her again when she's older, and she pulls a form of deception on him. There are many differences, of course, but the fact that two otherwise random films can share even that still amazes me. Firth plays a magician here, which is not uncommon to Woody Allen films - I'm thinking of the hypnotist seen in "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion", and also the disappearing act seen in Allen's segment of "New York Stories". I think he also had fortune tellers in "Broadway Danny Rose" and "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger", and Woody even played a magician himself in "Scoop".
Also, "Where the Truth Lies" seemed loosely based on Martin + Lewis, and this one was inspired by another real-life entertainer. It made me think of Harry Houdini, who was obsessed with debunking mentalists and occultists, but also performed magic acts himself. But the IMDB tells me that Colin's faux Chinese persona, Wei Ling Soo, is a reference to the stage name of William Ellsworth Robinson, who performed under the stage name Chung Ling Soo. He was another magician who was known for exposing spiritualists as charlatans.
Firth's magic expert, Stanley, is convinced from the start that the young Sophie Baker is a fraud, and that she's performing seances for rich people just to tell them what they want to hear. Imagine the Amazing Randi taking on that Long Island Medium, pointing out that her messages from beyond are really observations combined with guesswork (or in this modern age, perhaps things that could be determined from a quick internet search) but when she appears to know intimate details of his past, he begins to believe in the supernatural.
This sort of echoes the things I was saying after watching "City of Angels" - if you believe in angels, then you have to believe in God and heaven and hell and the whole ball of wax. Similarly, if you believe in ghosts or messages from beyond, then there's an afterlife and you end up falling down the same rabbit hole. Stanley's world is rocked because if she's getting messages, then everything he's stood for is wrong, but instead of making him angry, he's relieved and delighted for a while.
This is the lure of any magic trick, or any movie for that matter. For a few minutes we want to believe that the impossible has happened, or for a few hours we want to believe in angels or aliens or dragons or cartoon characters, but then when the credits roll, we've got to go back to our regular lives. I must have been about 7 or 8 when I demanded to know whether fairy tales were real - not because I wanted to discredit them, but because I needed to get it straight in my own head, what was real human history and what was not. Eventually this led me into filmmaking, because after seeing "Star Wars", I wanted to know more about the way movies were made, which is really the way that stories are told.
I think, like Stanley, I became a skeptic about stories, and once you're a skeptic, it's an easy slide toward becoming a cynic. Once I learned how movies were made, there was a long period where I couldn't take them seriously, or I guess maybe I was taking them TOO seriously, and I couldn't just relax and enjoy them. Now I've sort of found that appreciation again, except for the ones I have a hand in making.
I wonder how much of Woody Allen is in Stanley (besides the fact that he's attracted to a much younger woman, that is). Like Woody, Stanley seems well versed in the philosophy of Nietzsche, such as fatalism and nihilism. But perhaps the only things that can counter such a depressing viewpoint are optimism, love and believing in something bigger than yourself, whether that's God or cinema or raising children. And if you don't have something to believe in, I can sort of see how a skeptic who becomes a cynic could easily become a fatalist - I'm probably working my way there.
Woody's previous film "Blue Jasmine" dealt with a slightly similar theme, in that the lead character's world was falling apart, and she had to rebuild herself - here Stanley's whole belief system is challenged, he turns from skeptic to believer and back again. The most unbelievable thing to me seems to be how well he rolls with the changes - most people probably wouldn't handle being deceived so well.
Woody Allen's great at picking out old jazz tunes, but his knowledge of classical music really needs to be expanded. I've heard the selections featured here in dozens of movies, there's just nothing innovative about using Ravel's "Bolero" or Beethoven's 9th symphony, or Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring". I felt the same way while watching "Scoop" when he kept using "In the Hall of the Mountain King" to create suspense - it's just so played out, man.
Also starring Emma Stone (last seen in "Birdman"), Marcia Gay Harden (last seen in "Pollock"), Simon McBurney (last seen in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"), Hamish Linklater (last seen in "42"), Jacki Weaver (last seen in "Silver Linings Playbook"), Eileen Atkins, Catherine McCormack (last seen in "Spy Game"), Jeremy Shamos, Erica Leerhsen.
RATING: 5 out of 10 ukulele solos
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