Blue notes
COVER STORY
From E27
Allen’s relentless pace, his craftsman’s regularity, rob his films of the event feeling a new work by a Scorsese or Steven Spielberg are often met with, as if he is purposefully trying to lower expectations. Films that seem undercooked on first glance gain resonance over time, while other films lose their initial impact. Though never to be counted out entirely, Allen makes it easy to overlook any single film for the ongoing rush. In a way, it can be as if he doesn’t entirely get them all either.
‘‘I don’t know why they like one and not another,’’ he said of the surprise audience response to Midnight compared with his other recent films. ‘‘If I could figure it out, I might be able to get rich.’’
Blue Jasmine is, by Allen’s own speculation, less likely to find such a broad audience due to its serious, dramatic nature. The film’s structure finds Blanchett’s character reflecting upon moments from her past, looking for clues to her own downfall, creating a deep emotional resonance. She gives in some sense two performances, one as the fine society lady, and the other as someone at moments akin to a babbling street crazy in a Chanel jacket.
The film also has Allen’s typical deep bench of supporting performers, with strong turns by Baldwin, Sally Hawkins, Peter Sarsgaard, Bobby Cannavale, Louis C K and Andrew Dice Clay. No character is quite as they first seem, some revealing themselves to be deeper and more emotionally sensitive, while others turn out shallow and selfserving.
The film will likely draw comparisons to the story of Ruth Madoff, wife of disgraced financier Bernard Madoff. Though Allen downplays the connection, Blanchett did do some research into their story, as well as other society doyennes deposed by the economic collapse. ‘‘I followed that story in the paper like everyone else, but it was not an influence in any way on the movie,’’ Allen said of the Madoff story, while noting that he was inspired by something his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, told him of a high-society woman who had to take a job after losing her wealth.
Perhaps what drew him to the idea was an opportunity to look at the all-too-human weakness for self-delusion, the ways in which we all often have to convince ourselves of lies big and small to make it through the day and press on with our lives.
Though the two never did have a conversation regarding the big ideas of the film, Blanchett picked up a clue from an off-the-cuff comment by Allen.
‘‘He wouldn’t even remember saying it, but he said something along the lines of, ‘ We all know the same truth, and that our lives consist of how we choose to distort it.’’’
Allen prefers not to think of his work as a veiled autobiography, or notes on the human condition. Perhaps belying his roots as a teenage joke-writer and early work as a nightclub comedian, he sees his goals as far more modest.
‘‘I’m thinking of entertaining,’’ he says of what motivates his writing. ‘‘That I feel is my first obligation. Then, if you can also say something, make a statement or elucidate a character, or create emotions in people where they’re sad or laughing, that’s all extra. But to make a social point or a psychological point without being entertaining is homework. That’s lecturing.’’
Allen saw Blue Jasmine as a distinctly American story. New York was an obvious location for a
‘Frankly, I thought Allen thought I was awful for the bulk of the film.’
film touching on a financial scandal, but his choice of San Francisco as the film’s second location, came down to where he thought he could spend a comfortable summer.
‘‘Her sister could have lived any place and it would have been fine. I couldn’t live any place, that was the problem,’’ he said.
Allen is notoriously hands-off as a director, with apocryphal stories of his meeting performers for only a few minutes during casting and then barely speaking to them during production. Yet having directed six Oscar-winning performances, he must be doing something right. As far as his leading lady, he said, ‘‘I mean, she’s Cate Blanchett, what can you do? You hire her and get out of the way.’’
Though he is prone to referencing old-guard art house stalwarts such as Bergman, Fellini or Kurosawa, Blanchett compares him to film-makers she has worked with such as David Fincher, Jim Jarmusch, Wes Anderson or Steven Soderbergh, framing him as a contemporary working film-maker in a way his legend often precludes.
Since Blanchett and Allen had never worked together, part of her preparation was to speak with other actors who had worked with him and to study the 2011 American Masters documentary on him.
‘‘Frankly, I thought he thought I was awful for the bulk of the film,’’ Blanchett admitted, noting that for her the breakthrough came when she realised it wasn’t her, it was him.
‘‘Once you realise that Woody is never pleased, he is never satisfied, that’s why he makes a film a year, that’s why he’s so prolific as a film-maker,’’ she said. Allen acknowledged one consequence of his prolific output is that his films exist almost outside of his control. Likening the process to sessions of psychoanalysis, he said, unconsciously recurrent themes emerge over years of work.
With its structure that teeters between the problems of the past and the struggles of the present, Blue Jasmine grapples directly with the twined difficulties of looking back and moving forward, and how we can all become an unreliable narrator to ourselves.
‘‘I think I was always reflective,’’ he noted. ‘‘I think that may have been a strength and a weakness. Early on, going as far back as Annie Hall, there are all these cerebral characters talking about life, thinking about death, thinking about the meaning of life, thinking about why relationships didn’t work, always thinking and verbalising their thoughts, always reflecting.
‘‘I think I’m no more reflective now,’’ he added with a giggle, ‘‘at death’s door. But you do get conscious of it. But I was conscious of ageing at 14.
‘‘I might have been happier if I was a novelist. So instead of having to raise millions of dollars to put on these stories, the novelist sits at home; you write, if you don’t like it you throw it away.
‘‘If I throw something away, I’m throwing away $100,000 every time I take a scene out. Or music might have been a better thing.
‘‘If I really can go back, early, early, early in my life maybe a ballet dancer.’’
Allen – perhaps joking, perhaps not – exists, you might say, at the very intersection of the two, a playful showman amid uncompromising selfexamination. As supporting evidence for either case, he added, ‘‘I was a very athletic kid.’’