Cinematic Genius
iView Author: Dhiman Ghosh (Kolkata, India)
Email:dhiman90 [at] gmail [dot]com
Cinematic Genius
Allen’s a hell of a talented moviemaker. Most of his movies are like his philosophies getting transformed into cinema. I just watched ‘The Purple Rose of Cairo’ and it’s like a cinematic personification of Allen himself. I mean, his questions about meaning of love, about what is real and unreal and confusion in case of romantic feelings….we have all seen snips and bits of them in various Allen’s movies’ over the years. But ‘The Purple Rose of Cairo’ is the one in which all of them blended together in a sort of mix.
A timid housewife who’s dominated by her husband, Cecilia, finds solace and refuge in movies. She seems to come alive when in a movie theatre as she imagines and dreams about the life of the onscreen characters. One day, while watching a movie titled ‘The Purple Rose of Cairo’ for the fifth time, a character named Tom Baxton (poet, adventurer, explorer) comes out (literally) of the movie screen, being intrigued by Cecilia’s more than once presence in the movie hall (this may be depicted as Cecilia cracking up under worldly pressures and unfulfilled dreams, but then, Allen always makes his movies in a ‘light’ tone, doesn’t he? Moreover he never seemed to have cared much about interpretations either.) What follows is a quest for learning more about the real world for Baxton, a charming love affair between him and Cecilia, and the makers and the other characters of the movie find themselves amidst chaos and panic, as their character has ‘run away’ from the movie. Then in the whirlwind of fate Cecilia, in the middle of her affair, meets Gill Shepard, the actor who played Tom Baxton, and discovering similarities between themselves gets attracted to him as well. In her words, the ignored housewife a week ago, she is now romanticized by two persons, who are the same…
In a word, it’s truly one of Allen’s masterpieces, which never really recieved tumultenous acclaim, but one of his best.
Now what is it about Allen? The most striking feature about his films is I think that they are suitable both as mass entertainers and for the intelligentsia. By the mainstream movie audience Allen is regarded as a comedian. It’s a fact that he did start his career as a comedian. But to a fraction of the audience, who can perceive the underlying concept of his movies, he is something of a genius, a breakthrough in movie making. The themes that Bergman had dealt with, in his movies, can be seen in a number of Allen’s works. For example, existentialism is a theme in many of Allen’s films. Consider Love and Death. A philosophical comedy. The last scene, in which Boris dances away with a white robed Death, is an ode to Bergman’s masterpiece, “The Seventh Seal”. Certain movies also deal with the themes like guilt and redemption (inspired from Dostoyevsky), the most notable ones being Match Point and Crimes and Misdemeanors. While Match Point, owing to it’s glamorous star cast was a big hit, Crimes and Misdemeanors dealing primarily with philosophical and psychological issues didn’t fare too well at the box office.
In a word, Allen’s key to success lies in the blend of comedy in his philosophical expressions. At the age of 75, he is one of the few filmmakers left in the world, who regard his films as works of art through which they express themselves. Now that’s what people should make movies for, right? Not in the hopes of creating box office hits, but simply because they want to.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
An Outstanding film, good post !!!
GK
@Dhiman..The excellent part of this article is the second to last paragraph..where the aspects of Woody’s movie, seldom discussed..is bought forward..I have often wondered, why would one use philiosophical entities in between a fun riot…and sometimes, like match point, Woody’s theme can be as dark as it can get…A crisp analysis of a great filmmaker’s versatality..
Why we love allen??!! A question he would love to indulge in without even being allen, yes thats him, he simply loves to debate or lets say philosophy about anything without giving the last word, most of his movies are like this.. BUT with a cinematic twist and trick round the corner
1. The above mentioned case: Protagonist comes out of TV
2. Zelig: A mocumentry on chameleon-ism (wanna fit in)
3. Crimes and Misdemeanor : Extra Martial affair with a twist..
and the list goes on…
I also love his idea of putting in a ‘PJ’ in most of his movies… love the timings when they come..
For eg: In Misdemeanors
“Its been a while since i have been in a woman, The last was the statue of liberty”
Oh btw my favourite allen movie is annie hall!!!
@Sudipto
Oh Yes, not to forget Annie Hall. Don’t we all agree to what Allen said about relationships at the end of the movie? It’s probably Allen’s venture into less abstract subjects as love or relationships that made the movie an Oscar winner…
A wonderful film-maker!
Loved ‘Vicky Christina Barcelona’!
Nice to see a post on this brilliant director.
@Dhiman!
THANKS A MILLION! I worship WOODY! Thanks fro writing very good post about him.