From: yrol@invalid.fr   
      
   On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 23:59:30 -0400, strwbery_fields@webtv.net (Mr. KiTe)   
   wrote:   
      
   >Just opinion. Yes, I would agree it's not a "political movie", and I   
   >don't think any of his films are, the beauty of allen is subjectivity,   
   >in all it's agony, and irony. He's not an objective filmmaker. Yet, his   
   >most objective films are the angry ones. Take H&W, and Harry, most of   
   >Celebrity, and now AE - he's brutal to his persona. It's rage therapy.   
   >His chamber dramas never have happy endings, they are open-ended at   
   >best, arguably pessamisic. I feel his comedies, even within the genre of   
   >satire - are topical, and not enlightening to a conclusion, they allow   
   >for hollywood endings. His mixtures of these elements tend to be the   
   >most succesful.   
      
   It's difficult to me to speak in english to translate my ideas... Very   
   difficult because it's so complex... and simple at the same time.   
      
   Sometimes, Woody Allen make a comedy, just a comedy (it's always more   
   subtil off course) like a Hollywood's one. Woody Allen is like Molière (you   
   know the french author ?), he made comic movies with drama inside. A   
   Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy is a tragedy ! It is a movie very deep than a   
   simple comedy. Woody Allen make a movie in full nature but it's very   
   ironic. No love and each person want the woman or the man of the other,   
   precisely because the other is already with someone else.   
      
   It is impossible for him to make movies like Ingmar Bergman. In the 90's,   
   he stops only making dramatic movies and mixes the comedy and the drama.   
      
   But the characters are contradictory. Always contradictory. They finish to   
   hate themself. (Lee in Celebrity, Harry, Zelig which is Jewish and becomes   
   a Nazi)  Or like Alvy Singer at the beginning : "I would never wanna belong   
   to any club that would have someone like me for a member."   
      
   When you say : "He's not an objective filmmaker. " I do not agree in a   
   certain way. As I said it : "All Woody Allen's movies  say the same thing :   
   less the reality is accepted as it is, more we fall in the neurosis."   
      
   The problem is what is real and what is not real (see The purple Rose of   
   Cairo) and not between objective and subjective. However, Woody always   
   criticizes the mirages which the men have, like Lee in Celebrity, Jerry in   
   Anything Else about Amanda for example. A false representation of world or   
   woman, man, things...   
      
   Remember the joke in Anything Else : "In your case, Falk, there is a   
   seminal joke that Henny Youngman used to tell that I think is perfect.   
   It sums it up perfectly as far as you go. Guy comes into a doctor's office.   
   He says, "Doc, it hurts when I do this." The doctor says, "Don't do it."   
   Think about that."   
      
   And it is what Jerry will make in his life with Amanda.  Exactly like us in   
   our life.  When we have a problem, we groan without wanting to solve the   
   mirage which obsesses us. Woody Allen's movies are not autobiography as we   
   often say it. If his characters speak too much and are too neurotics, it is   
   because they do not act enough. But David Dobel is contradictory, he's not   
   able to apply the same thing for him ! He's a violent man but he's lucid at   
   the same time.   
      
   Woody Allen always speaks about the difference between the image, the   
   representation which we have of the world compared to what the world is   
   really. And the death is real but men don't want to look the reality face   
   to face. So they become crazy.   
      
   Remember that Isaac says in Manhattan : "An idea for a short story   
   about, um, people in Manhattan who are constantly creating these real,   
   unnecessary, neurotic problems for themselves cos it keeps them from   
   dealing with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about the universe."   
      
   >You could read into the magic often referenced in Allen films at work in   
   >here. Are the doubts planted his own double against himself for a   
   >purpose, or to repress himself, or both? When he types at the computor,   
   >and erases it - is he against himself by staying in a bad situation, or   
   >for himself in dismissing Dobel. When he finally chooses to go with   
   >Dobel, he's rejected. Is Dobel all talk? Wouldn't moving to LA be the   
   >same as "laying low for awhile" ? Is Falk running from the reality he   
   >knows but can't face up to, or is he merely following the same pattern   
   >of switching one old suit for another ?   
      
   It's the problem. When you said : "Interesting idea Falk/Dobel representing   
   the same person years removed."   
      
   Yes and no because it's the same person and not a same person. A double   
   like Zelig who imitates anybody. Because men imitate the ones the others   
   while believing to be themselves. It's ok ?   
      
   Rene Girard, a French anthropologist who lives with the United States and   
   sign at the university of Stanford speaks about the mimetic desire.   
      
   At the same time, we are different and we all resemble each other. Woody   
   Allen speaks about the identity and the conflict between what is real and   
   what is not real, in short, the human desire. And the next is Melinda and   
   Melinda, same name and two persons, a double yet.   
      
   >Allen seems to say it doesn't matter. It's a classic open-end. Like the   
   >Amanda he's fixated on - there's no telling, she could go one way or the   
   >other just as happily. It's when she's not moving she's unhappy.   
      
   Amanda is an hysterical woman. Like Judy Davis in Husbands and Wives. Same   
   thing. She's never accepts the reality of her desire, of her feelings, then   
   she intellectualizes them. A false representation.   
   --   
   Yannick Rolandeau   
   http://yrol.free.fr/   
   "Un homme qui n'est jamais idiot n'est pas tout à fait humain"   
                       Gonzalo Torrente Ballester   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)