for some reason, i assume that everyone in the universe has an extensive mental storehouse of knowledge about woody allen. egomania seems to be the only plausible explanation for this entirely unsubstantiated belief. much like the reason for this blog, i suppose. but i have to recognize that, while most people tends either towards ironic or banefully descriptive blog titles, i have chosen a riff on woody allen's 1975 book, which can best be described as a series of vignettes, strung together only by allen's perpetually ironic, self-referential, self-obsessed, nervous, and utterly jewish new yorkerness.
in the interest of full disclosure, i must note that i can really only claim half of the afore-mentioned adjectives and none of the nouns. falling ar short of allen, i am merely ironic, self-referential, and nervous. i am not, nor have i ever been a jewish new yorker, even when i practically took up residency in zabars, spending my retreat-from-columbia hours fetching things from top shelves for little but loud older jewish grandmothers. i was not employed at zabars - i just lived there. extremely unhappy at columbia, where one chanel-wearing young woman haughtily informed me that she read sds' port huron statement every year because it was "philosophically complicated" and "moved her," i fled to virginia. there are far fewer jewish grandmothers in virginia, and i miss them enormously. but there are also far fewer young self-consciously ironic girls clothed in designer labels and afflicted with the serious misconception that they can (and must) speak authoritatively about "radical" causes because they read foucault one semester and studied the black panthers in the next.
but i digress. explaining woody allen is an important disclosure here, given my high school commitment to knowing anything and everything about him and my continuing reliance on his early films as the equivalent of comfort food. woody allen movies are the movies i can "watch" simply by pressing the play button and walking away. i know all the lines. the characters are so familiar to me that i find them comforting, even if allen has clearly constructed them as grating and awkward individuals with whom no one can identify without absorbing a great deal of their psychoses first. in my head, all his characters have become big-person versions of the kids in ralphie's classroom at the beginning of annie hall. the cutest ones are the ones with severe problems - the girl who's "into leather," the little boy hooked on meth. adorable, no?
but the opening of annie hall best encapsulates the reason why i go back to allen's early material again and again. woody allen is a fake pessimist. the irony, the overburdened chronic depression, the obsession with sex and death, even the nervous hands and the nervous verbal delivery are all there to throw allen's complete and utter love affair with the world and with people - not specific people, but people generally - into relief. and he likes the crazies the best. themes of depression and imminent death are all really annoying because woody allen insists on hitting you over the head with them, but they're effective because they're so wholly untrue by the time you get to the end of the film and are in love with all of the characters anyway. even, oftentimes, woody allen himself.
in manhattan, this sentiment extends to new york city itself, and you begin to fall in love with new york's ability to combine frenetic activity with utterly calm statis, as allen moves between still (often nighttime) cityscape frames and continually active street scenes. the amazing thing about woody allen's cinematography is his ability to merge the inside of buildings with the street - its a fundamental part of new york that few filmmakers get it right, if they attempt it at all. and allen's ability to capture that aspect of the city often forces me to recommit my fundamentally midwestern self to loving new york city because it's so haphazardly yet forcefully alive. though they've kicked all the poor people out, new york still buzzes. i was never as aware of my own body moving through space as i was in new york.
woody allen is also acutely aware of his own body, and he evidences this awareness through a nervousness that is both ego-driven (new york prizes neuroses) and a sign of emotional vulnerability. i think that's why i chose to name this site after allen's book, and i think it's the reason why i still love woody allen, despite his recent raft of horrible and repetitive film flops and despite his oft-noted marriage to his former adopted daughter. quite frankly, i couldn't care less. i care much more about annie hall.
No comments:
Post a Comment