As usual, the new Woody Allen film — his 48th feature in 51 years! — is a disturbing departure from the last few. What disturbs is its newness. We’re disappointed when our expectations are denied. So an adjustment is necessary if we are to take it on its own, proper terms.
The plot is familiar: when a small town hick comes to New York, her relationship with a city guy is challenged by the Big City. It’s Neil Simon country but Allen infuses it with an uncommon density of personal inflection. That goes beyond “What’s sexy about short-term memory loss?” And “Time flies….Unfortunately, it flies coach…. It’s not always a comfortable trip.”
Specifically the film responds to the time and circumstance of its making. When Mia Farrow’s long-dismissed allegations of Allen’s alleged abuse of her daughter resurfaced, Amazon broke their agreement to fund and distribute the film. As a result, the film is available in Europe but not in North America. So here: “The world is full of tragic little deal-breakers.” And “There are no newspapers that are not tabloids.” Not since Manhattan has Allen delivered such an encomium to New York City: “You are here or you are nowhere. You cannot achieve another level of anxiety, hostility or paranoia anywhere else.” Instead of the usual star-studded Allen cast, here Jude Law is the film’s one big star.
As his name suggests, Gatsby Welles is a cultural construct. “Gatsby” signifies the illusion of old wealth and social stature. “Welles” connotes a maverick individuality. The hero’s wealthy family propel him into the arts, the responsibilities of high society, the mixed blessings of the privileged. But at that privilege he bristles.
This Gatsby took classical piano but yearns to play romantic ballads in a bar. He doesn’t have to be able to sing well to enjoy singing a classic ballad. Instead of college studies he prefers high stakes gambling (at which he succeeds uncommonly, like Woody the filmmaker). Ultimately Gatsby breaks out of his romantic rut, unlike brother Hunter, doomed to marry a woman with an emasculating laugh.
Gatsby’s girlfriend Ashleigh comes from a wealthy Tucson banking family. A journalism student at Yardley College, she takes him to New York to interview the famously serious film director Roland Pollard. “You’re too original to have mass appeal,” the awed Ashleigh assures him. Gatsby’s old schoolmate dismisses his work with “Never a decent toilet joke.” When Ashleigh quotes Pollard’s line “Love and death are two sides of the same coin” she doesn’t understand it, but has evoked an early (funny) Allen title.
The R.P. director’s nominal echo of Roman Polanski sets up Ashleigh’s NYC adventure. While in real life Farrow persists in her discounted allegations against Allen, she publicly defends Polanski against the sex charges to which he pled guilty. Here Pollard, his writer Ted Davidoff and actor Francisco Vega personify the predatory film industry that feeds off the star-struck, helpless naifs. Pollard uses his artistic suffering, Davidoff his unfaithful wife and Vega his star power to seduce the relatively innocent Ashleigh. Only the early return of Vega’s girlfriend preserves Ashleigh’s relative chastity. Implicitly Allen places Farrow’s persistent allegations in the larger context that undermines her.
Seeing Ashleigh on TV with Vega, the heartbroken Gatsby hires a hooker to represent his fiancee at his mother’s classy dinner As Gatsby describes his mother’s literary circle: “It's rich housewives who have the leisure to pursue esoteric culture. The out of work, discussing the out of print.“ After his mother sees through the ploy and sends the woman home she tells Gatsby that she had herself been a hooker. Indeed that’s how she met his father. Indeed she used her savings to set up his eventually successful business. This candour opens Gatsby’s relationship with his mother: “She’s a lot more than I gave her credit for.” With that knowledge he can accept himself as well as her and he can follow his desire to stay in New York and live the life he prefers. There is not such a gaping gap between the respectable and the pragmatic after all. There is non shame in honesty.
The film ripples with allusions. Its sentimental core starts with the opening song: “I got lucky in the rain.” The singer sadly needs a song, then “You came along,” the love of his life. Relationships begin and end in the rain here, climactically over “Misty,” because the rain signifies the melancholy chill from which we seek love for shelter. “What I really need,” Gatsby avers, “is a Berlin ballad.” In the converse call to social realism, Gatsby is supposed to see the Weegee exhibition at MOMA, but he abandons that to follow his new interest, Chan, the grown-up kid sister of his old flame Amy, into the older histories in the Met.
This relationship begins with the Benedick-Beatrice sparring on a student film set, where they meet and have to act a passionate kiss. Eventually their life will follow that art. They meet on that film set, have that museum date then meet again under the Central Park clock reliving a favourite romantic film. Rooted in an old culture, Chan’s home is full of Old Master paintings and antiques. She reads Gatsby as an exotic searching for a romantic dream from a vanished age. That becomes her. But she's an active creative spirit. Gatsby's move from Amy through Ashleigh to Amy's younger sister evokes Allen's from his relationship to Mia to her neglected step-daughter.
Chan wins out over Ashleigh because she knows Allen’s familiar dependency upon art for a meaning and consolation otherwise rarely available: “Real life is fine for people who can’t do any better.” That’s a film-romance re-write of Gatsby’s mother’s career.
Unfortunately, to cleanse themselves of the old Allen “scandal” Timothee Chalamet and Rebecca Hall announced they were donating their salaries to charity. They make themselves victims of the slander and misrepresentation Allen has suffered and survived for so many years. This is a film they should be proud of having served.
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