woody allen’s new movie “café society” is set in the thirties, you know, that distant land where movies were movies, cars were like boats, and a man could wear a suit the color of butter peanut and it still looks good. Aside from a stunned look at things to come, in “Sleeper” (1973), Allen’s preference, as a time traveler, has been a fast ticket to the past. The journey hasn’t always worked out, and Allen has been wise enough, in “Zelig” (1983) and “Midnight in Paris” (2011), to remind us how fragile and treacherous history can be; and yet, more often than not, fate has been a haven. just look at “the purple rose of cairo” (1985), “radio days” (1987), “bullets over broadway” (1994), or the melodious “sweet and lowdown” (1999). Allen was born in 1935, which is why a movie like “Radio Days,” while full of warm tales, feels less like fantasy and more like a family scrapbook.
The hero of the new film is Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg), who lives in the Bronx with his father, Marty (Ken Stott), and mother, Rose (Jeannie Berlin). We first meet Bobby when he arrives in Los Angeles, hoping to try his luck with his uncle Phil. this is not such a bad idea. Phil Stern (Steve Carell) is a Hollywood agent, and we first meet him in a tuxedo, by his pool, surrounded by his beau monde of the trade. “I’m expecting a call from ginger rogers,” he says. Phil is always waiting, answering or making calls, although we never see the stars with whom or who he talks about, not because he is a fraud but because the movie gods of that time were and still are, for anyone from Allen’s time. beyond human calculation, and certainly beyond impersonation. Similarly, when Phil gives her assistant Vonnie (Kristen Stewart) the task of showing her nephew around town, what she and Bobby do is stand outside the stars’ houses and watch. they might as well be looking at the night sky.
Reading: Cafe society new yorker
The only place we see a celebrity is on the screen: in a movie theater, where Bobby and Vonnie are watching Barbara Stanwyck in “The Lady in Red” (1935). It’s a perfect choice for Allen: not a great movie, but the kind of entertainment that, as we like to tell ourselves, came along smoothly on a regular basis. (And Stanwyck, in the foreground, takes your breath away. That’s not nostalgia; that’s awe.) For now, it goes without saying that Bobby and Vonnie have grown closer. Bobby is clumsy at heart; Instead of just falling in love, he flounders and stumbles, nicely caught up in Eisenberg’s fickle chatter, punctuated with hiccups of anxiety. but there is, as there always must be, a problem. vonnie is dating someone else. worse still, the step must be stealthy, because that someone is uncle phil.
love triangles, like other forms of romantic geometry, are nothing new to allen’s movies. what is different about the “coffee society” is how casually the narrative of the story unfolds. it is not that allen is following the movements but that the movements no longer consume him. (That might imply the sweetness of the years, but consider Robert Bresson, who was Allen’s age in the early 1980s when he made “l’Argent” (1983), a narrative as taut as a piano string. ). Twist, for example, is introduced early, without a hint of suspense, and, as we turn east, into a subplot about Bobby’s mean brother, Ben (Corey Stoll), a bully whose idea of friendly persuasion involves a well of wet concrete, the mood of the film barely skips a beat. people get shot in front of us, but we are left with the feeling that no harm has been done. Later, with Ben’s encouragement, Bobby returns to New York and they open a nightclub. it thrives, attracting the same brand of tony folk that once thronged around phil’s pool. a resourceful clan, the dorfmans.
None of this, one could say, is even remotely believable, but “the coffee society” does not seem like a candy or a parody. there is a gravity to it, and a tug of sadness, that history cannot explain. in “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (1989), ostensibly a much more serious movie, Allen says, from show business, that “is worse than dog-eat-dog. It’s the phone calls from other dogs that don’t return the dog.” in the “coffeehouse society,” says the hero, of hollywood, “it’s really kind of a boring, nasty, dog-eat-dog industry.” no kicker, no laugh. The performances also shy away from the wacky and the broad, and Carell, a master of the brave face, does a good job of suggesting the tension behind Uncle Phil’s good nature. Better still is Stewart, who, despite the boyish touches to her outfits (headband, white ankle socks with strappy sandals), reveals a woman veiled in regret, and her final moments, in which Vonnie reflects on the paths taken and rejected, are a beautiful act of suspension, done without a word.
if this film has a secret, it lies in the cinematography, none other than vittorio storaro, who filmed “the conformist”, “last tango in paris” and “apocalypse now”. He worked with Allen on a segment of “New York Stories” (1989), but “Cafe Society” marks their first full-length collaboration, and the result is more dazzling to behold, more, I think, than any Allen film since Gordon. . willis filmed “manhattan” in black and white. No one has delved more fruitfully into the depths of color than Storaro, exploring its contribution to political and physical extremes, and it could be argued that Allen should have summoned him sooner, to trace Cate Blanchett’s prostration in “Blue Jasmine” (2013). ). Is the “coffee society” an occasion too small for the inquiring art of Storaro? maybe so, however, there are scenes here, particularly the interiors, in phil’s office, in the bar where he sneaks vonnie in, and in the humble apartment where bobby cooks her a dinner that she doesn’t show up for , which burn almost painfully with Woody Allen’s longing for the past. it lies there resplendent, as recognizable as a movie star and as homey as a home, always just out of reach.
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The subject of “Animated Life,” a new documentary directed by Roger Ross Williams, is Owen Suskind, now twenty-five years old. In the early 1990s, when Owen was three years old, he began to withdraw into himself. neither his motor skills nor his ability to speak were working as they should. The change was so rapid that he left his parents—Ron Suskind, then a Wall Street Journal reporter, and his wife, Cornelia—deeply alarmed. they seemed to be losing the owen they knew. In Ron’s words, “someone kidnapped our son.”
They consulted a specialist, who diagnosed autism. The prospects of getting Owen back, so to speak, or substantially alleviating her condition, were bleak. Then, “a year later, in her silence,” as Ron puts it, the family was watching a video of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.” Suddenly, Owen spoke, repeating the villain’s words: “only your voice.” of all the lines in all the movies all over the world, it was because of those. a doctor, however, dashed hopes by identifying a case of echolalia, in psychiatric terms, a parrot of sounds that has no weight of meaning. Cut to the ninth birthday of Walter, Owen’s older brother, when Owen, having talked for four years in what Ron describes as “nonsense,” walked into the kitchen and announced, “Walter doesn’t want to grow up, like Mowgli or Peter.” frying pan.”
Only the coldest viewer could see the suskinds remembering this event and not share their amazement and joy. Added to this was the strange realization that disney was not an escape or a palliative for owen, but his main tool to connect with the experience, to make sense of it instead of being overwhelmed or harassed. (In itself, his addiction to Disney movies, as well as his ability to learn them by heart, is not unusual. Any exhausted Frozen-era parent will attest.) he was often less attracted to heroes than sidekicks. , like Baloo, in “The Jungle Book”, or the curmudgeonly Iago, in “Aladdin”, even devising a land of lost cronies, with himself as his appointed protector. he wanted to help the helpers.
owen has made immense progress, to which “life,animated” is a moving tribute, but it leaves a trail of unanswered or unanswered questions. How many children with autism find a particular pattern, the way Owen found Disney, and without that pattern are they more likely to get locked in? Would a child deprived of the generous love, intellectual curiosity, and worldly means of the suskinds be able to follow Owen’s course? Then there are bigger, more disturbing puzzles: You wonder how this movie affects the cultural accusations that have long been leveled against Disney: that the products charm and infantilize generation after generation, offering a view of life that is solvable. and simplified to a fault. Does owen’s story require us to retract that accusation? At one point, when the Suskind children are grown, Walter gently explains to his brother how they like to kiss people in love. “They don’t just use their lips, they use their-?” Walter asks. pause. “They use their feelings,” Owen replies. the other walt would be proud. ♦
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