Film Review
Interiors may be Woody Allen's first foray into straight drama but
it is by no means his first attempt to tackle the deeply serious themes that
underpin his art, both as a comedian and writer-director. Tonally,
Interiors, the seventh film that Allen wrote and directed and the
first he did not himself appear in, is a massive departure from its author's
previous screen offerings, and Allen was himself convinced that the film
would flop. As it turned out, the critics were (mostly) fulsome in
their praise for what many considered to be Allen's most explicit attempt
to imitate his personal hero, the Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, and it
was even a moderate success at the box office. Woody Allen had made
his name as a comic performer and director of film comedies. With
Interiors,
he proved that he could also succeed without having to make his audience
laugh - it was a pivotal film that would be the precursor to some of his
best (and worst) work.
Right from the off,
Interiors impresses as an altogether more sombre
and introspective piece than Allen was known for at the time. The opening
montage of mournfully lit shots in the rooms of an abandoned beach house,
with no sound to accompany them, are felt as a crushing lament - what we
feel immediately is a pain that cannot be expressed for a loss that cannot
be endured. It is the aching interior void we all feel when someone close
to us has departed this world. As we soon see, this solemn opening
provides a fitting visual metaphor for the lives of the protagonists, an
estranged middleclass couple and their three wildly different daughters.
They form a quintet of troubled souls who, throughout the film, appear
wilfully immured in an anaemic phantom existence, drifting through life more
like faint shadows on a wall than real people. The emptiness of their
lives is made evident through Gordon Willis's sober cinematography and the
strikingly glacial set design (the work of Mel Bourne and Daniel Robert)
and we soon realise that what the matriarch Eve has been doing with her life
is not to raise a family, but rather to construct a perfect still life -
what the French call a
nature morte.
It is because of their mother's controlling influence (she will never allow
so much as a table lamp to be put out of place) that the three sisters fail
to develop and live full and satisfied lives. On the threshold of middle-age,
their illusions rapidly fading, they come to see not only the futility of
their lives but also the cause of their failure. The mother they are
obliged to love and who, as depression and a degenerative brain disorder
do their worst, needs their support more than ever, has become unbearable
to them all. Paralysed by indecision, fear of failure and an awareness
of the nearness of death, the three daughters each lives a separate existence
in a melancholy of quiet despair, each trapped in her own little room.
The critics were quick to connect
Interiors with some of Ingmar Bergman's
films, most notably his masterpiece
Cries and Whispers (1972),
which stylistically it does at times resemble. However, the strongest
influence is almost certainly Eugene O'Neill's 1941 play
Long Day's Journey
into Night, which offers a similarly intense portrait of a dysfunctional
American family falling apart before our eyes. Allen's script may lack
the depth and subtlety of O'Neill's landmark play, but the characters are
just as real, thanks in no small measure to the exquisite performances from
the four female leads, who include Allen's muse and frequent co-star Diane
Keaton. Geraldine Page leaves the strongest impression as the dominating
mother Eve - she received a Best Supporting Actress BAFTA for her performance
and was also nominated for an Oscar. The film received further Oscar
nominations for its direction, screenplay and art design, and Maureen Stapleton
was also nominated for her supporting role.
On the face of it,
Interiors may seem like a seismic shift from Allen's
previous work but it is merely approaching from a graver angle those themes
that had already featured in his earlier comedies - a neurotic obsession
with death and failure, the fragility of human relationships and the seeming
pointlessness of existence. It is a haunting work, bleakly Chekhovian
in its composition, darkly scathing in its assessment of the hollowness of
the American dream, which places material success over family responsibility
and true inner fulfilment.
Interiors is perhaps the most beguiling
and impactful of Allen's 'serious' films. It avoids the heavy-handedness
and wearying self-consciousness of his later films, which struggle to make
a coherent statement and tend to get tangled up in their artistic pretensions.
A perfectly constructed chamberpiece,
Interiors alternately enchants
and lacerates with its quiet contemplation on the human condition - and this
is what makes it one of the most rewarding of Woody Allen's dramatic films.
© James Travers 2016
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Next Woody Allen film:
Manhattan (1979)
Film Synopsis
Arthur, a wealthy corporate lawyer, and Eve, an interior designer, have
three grown-up daughters who are all obsessed with making a success of their
lives. The eldest is Renata, a published poet who fears her creative
powers may be deserting her. She gets little support from her husband
Frederick, a writer who is still struggling to make a name for himself.
The youngest daughter Flyn seldom sees her parents, so busy is she with her
career as a movie actress. She is the most contented of the three
sisters, but even she has started to question the value of her work. The
middle sister Joey is at an impasse. She is the daughter who is most
preoccupied with her mother's declining mental health and uses this as an
excuse for her inability to settle on a career. One day, Arthur announces
to his family that he wants a trial separation. This news pushes Eve
over the edge and she attempts suicide. When Arthur next visits his
daughters, it is in the company of the person he intends to marry, a down-to-earth
woman named Pearl. The already brittle relationship between the three
sisters further deteriorates as family unity is torn apart by guilt and recrimination.
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.