Film Review
With
Stardust Memories, Woody Allen completes an unbroken run of unique
film masterpieces that began with the zany sci-fi romp
Sleeper (1973) and saw him rapidly
develop from a great comedy writer-director and performer into a fully fledged,
serious auteur filmmaker. At the time of its release, the film was
lampooned by the critics, many of whom saw it as a poor man's version of
Federico Fellini's
8½ (1963)
or just a cold rehash of his earlier work. Whilst
Stardust Memories
certainly revisits the core themes of Allen's previous films -
Annie Hall (1977) and
Manhattan (1979) in particular
- it offers a fresh perspective on Allen's main preoccupations - the purpose
of life, the impossibility of finding true love - and is arguably the director's
most succinct expression of those anxieties that are at the crux of his art.
As in Fellini's film,
Stardust Memories is about a middle-aged film
director - played by Allen himself - who finds himself hopelessly locked
in a professional and personal impasse. But whereas
8½'s
Marcello Mastroianni has lost the will to go on making films, Allen's alter
ego (Sandy Bates) looks as if he has lost the will to go on living.
Citing the Second Law of Thermodynamics (which guarantees everything - even
long-running soap operas and shampoo commercials - will eventually come to
an end), Allen asks what is the point of doing anything if it is merely going
to wind up being blotted out of existence. Indeed, what is the point
of living if you know you are going to die and be totally forgotten not long
afterwards? It is the same fundamental question that Allen keeps coming
back to in his films, and it isn't until a later film -
Hannah and Her Sisters
(1986) - that he finally comes up with a plausible answer, which is that
the meaning of life is life itself.
Stardust Memories deserves to be rated as Woody Allen's most intelligent
and coherent work (in spite of a free-flowing narrative that shifts seamlessly
back and forth between reality and imagination, past and present), but there
is no question that it is one of the most attractively photographed of his
films. Doubtless encouraged by the success of
Manhattan, Allen
opted for black and white and his cinematographer (Gordon Willis) once again
surpasses himself, giving the film the arresting lustre, vitality and elegance
of a superior European art house movie of an earlier decade. Allen
seems to reference just about every first rank French and Italian film director
of the 1960s - from Jean-Luc Godard to Michelangelo Antonioni, although it
is the amusing allusions to Fellini's early films that are most easily spotted.
In one incredibly powerful sequence, Allen skilfully appropriates Godard's
use of jump-cutting to convey both the fractured state of mind of the protagonist's
former lover (Charlotte Rampling at her most enigmatic and desirable) and
the devastating emotional impact this has on her visitor. On a second
or third viewing, you will discover that the film is chockful of wonderful
little touches such as this.
Celebrity culture receives a fair bashing (as it would do in some of Allen's
later films) as the film morbidly dwells on the asininity and selfishness
of obsessive fans whilst convincing us that fame is definitely not what it
is cracked up to be. Allen was quick to dissociate himself with the
often unsympathetic character he plays in the film after its original (fairly
unsucessful) release, but the wearying pressure of persistent fan attention
is doubtless something he knows a great deal about - his vivid caricaturing
of fans in the film isn't that far from the truth. (If there is one
film guaranteed to put you off wanting to be famous, this is it.) The
disconnect between the public image and the private person is poignantly
felt throughout the film and a great deal of Allen's own personal frustration
comes through, in a way that can hardly fail to resonate with anyone who
has yet to match professional success with emotional fulfilment (i.e. just
about everyone with a pulse).
Like a deep philosophical discourse (but with far more belly laughs along
the way)
, Stardust Memories is a film that forces us to re-evaluate
our lives and seek within ourselves the purpose of our existence. Allen
doesn't need to be visited by super-intelligent extra-terrestrial beings
to be told what his role in the grand scheme of things is ("You're not Superman;
you're a comedian. You want to do mankind a real service? Tell funnier jokes!").
The answer as to what life is for lies within ourselves, and if you really
are that hung up on the fact that entropy will ultimately reduce everything
to a cold sea of lifeless star dust you really do need to spend less time
contemplating the futility of existence and watch more Woody Allen films.
© James Travers 2016
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Woody Allen film:
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982)
Film Synopsis
Sandy Bates is a middle-aged comedy film director whose attempt to make a
more serious movie is jeopardised by his producers. Against his will,
he is coerced into attending a film seminar offering a retrospective of his
past work. As he is being mauled by adoring fans who rave about his
early work he meets a young musician, Daisy, who reminds him strongly of
a mentally unstable woman, Dorrie, with whom he once he had an intense love
affair. Before he knows it, Sandy is torn between the youthful Daisy
and his present girlfriend, Isobel, who offers him the stability he desperately
needs.
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.