Cynical Cinema

There is an absolutely phenomenal box set being released on August 26th. Woody Allen has been one of the greatest American directors for many years, and while he is mostly remembered for his all-time classics, Manhattan and Annie Hall, every one of his films is worth watching for one reason or another. With his latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona in theatres, Alliance Films decided to release Woody Allen: The Collection today, August 26th. Every movie in this box is good, some are great. And while six of the discs have been readily available before this on DVD, the seventh is the bonus.

Wild Man Blues, a 1997 documentary film about Woody Allen, has been a hard-to-find item for some time. Not a film about Allen the film maker, but a film about Woody Allen the jazz musician. Allen, when not making films, plays jazz clarinet at a New York club. This film, directed by Barbara Kopple, follows Allen around as he takes the jazz ensemble on the road. The documentary was made right around the time when the public image of Allen was at it’s lowest. He had just left Mia Farrow for their stepdaughter Soon Yi Previn, and people were beginning to look on him as some kind of sexual predator. This film was accused of apple-polishing by some critics upon it’s release. As though it were some kind of brown-nosing attempt by Kopple to repair Allen’s tarnished image, and the movie was quickly forgotten. But in watching it now, it is merely a window into the man’s private life, his relationship with Soon-Yi, which really does appear to be pretty normal, and his relationship with his parents, which is eye-opening.

The other films in the set are all second-rate Woody Allen films, which would be first-rate films by almost anyone else. Mighty Aphrodite, the film for which Mira Sorvino won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, is a pretty fluffy film that works best as a reminder that Mira Sorvino CAN actually act. Bullets Over Broadway is a brilliantly funny comedy about gangsterism and the roaring twenties, featuring terrific performances by Chazz Palminteri and Dianne Wiest. Everyone Says I Love You is a musical comedy that is absolutely jammed with star power, and as such is one of the only Julia Roberts movies, AND one of the only Drew Barrymore movies, that I actually enjoy. Deconstructing Harry is a very dark comedy that is equally star-studded, with Robin Williams, Demi Moore, Billy Crystal and dozens of others in perhaps Woody Allen’s most under-rated movie. Celebrity is also jammed with big names, but isn’t one of Allen’s best efforts. And Scoop is likely the low point of the box set, with Scarlett Johanssen turning in a surprisingly mediocre performance and Hugh Jackman being a little more irritating than necessary. Not a horrible movie, but weak by Woody Allen standards.

Woody Allen: The Collection is a must for fans of his work, with Wild Man Blues being the icing on the cake. Get this box set, then pick up Annie Hall, Manhattan and Crimes And Misdemeanors, and you have all the Woody Allen you’ll ever need.

An Inconvenient Truth was effective, because first of all, it was the first massive, promoted, well-distributed movie about Global Warming and peoples’ effect on the environment.  It worked because Al Gore had some cachet, and because the movie was not only eye-opening, but also genuinely entertaining.  This is also why Michael Moore documentaries are so effective.  They are entertaining.  There are moments that make us cry, moments that make us laugh, and moments that educate us.  All of which makes for a good movie.  This is where The Eleventh Hour misses the boat.  It isn’t terribly entertaining.  It’s exremely informative, it very well-researched and well-documented, and it has considerable star power.  But it’s more preachy and tedious than An Inconvenient Truth, or even A Global Warning, the Discovery channel documentary that came out recently.

 It’s narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, and features appearances by such environmental luminaries as David Suzuki (I like David Suzuki - screw these people and their anti-Suzuki backlash) and such intellectual heavyweights as Stephen Hawking.  And seriously, if you’re not going to listen to Stephen Hawking, who are you going to believe?  But whereas in some situations the movie is heavy-handed with it’s preachy, doom-and-gloom message, it understates other things.  The environment COULD be the greatest challenge of our time?  No, it IS.  There are very few people left alive who would believe otherwise.  But I will say this for The Eleventh Hour - it has an awful lot of information that is important for us all to know and understand.

 There are some great ideas here.  The idea that sunlight has provided all the energy the world needs throughout most of our recorded history.  And that when we are taking fossil fuels out of the ground, we are actually using up “ancient sunlight” energy, which is of course a non-renewable resource.  We are now using thousands of times the energy that the sun provides, which means that at some point soon, we will no longer be self-sustaining.  When there were one billion people on Earth, we were a self-sustaining species, but now that the population of the planet has exploded over the past one hundred years (and, especially, over the last fifty) we are no longer able to reconcile the supply with the demand.  There is less food, what food there is is becoming increasingly poisoned with toxins, and factors such as deforestation, global warming, overdishing and chemical dumping are causing dead zones, flash floods, hurricanes and droughts.

David Suzuki says something interesting.  He points out that if we, the human race, were to create the kind of energy each year that nature does for free, it would cost us 36 trillion dollars.  A year.  The total gross national products of the world this past year total 18 million dollars.  Therefore, it would cost us twice what we make to do what nature does, and we are busily destroying that nature for our own ends.  And the U.S. is the biggest consumer, the biggest waster of resources, and the richest country, thereby becoming the biggest problem.  Americans (population 300 million) spend more money maintaining their lawns each year than all of India (population 1.1 billion) collects in taxes.  It all comes down to the Economy vs. the Environment, which any intellectual, (in this case Stephen Hawking) will tell you does not have to be a battle at all.  Why is it one or the other?  And who would ever suggest that they are of equal importance?  It’s rubbish.

 And one more good thing The Eleventh Hour does is this - it gives us hope.  A slim, glimmer of hope that we can save ourselves now, at the eleventh hour.  Sustainable cities, systems and industries are attainable.  (And, in all the models they show, seem to look like every futuristic sci-fi city we see in the movies.)  There CAN be a waste-free sustainable system - after all, nature does it, and has done so for millions of years.  We could reduce the human footprint on the environment by 90 percent fairly quickly if we act now.  But it will take a giant uprising, a huge movement of people, companies, businesses and of course governments all over the world to get it done.  The idea here is to impart the notion of “frugality” to people.  Not poverty, but the sensible appropriation of resources. 

A former CIA chief in the movie quotes Winston Churchill, when he said “Americans always do the right thing, but only after the have exhausted all other possibilities”.  The hope here is that at this point the Americans, and the rest of the world, HAVE exhausted all other possibilities of doing the right thing, and it is now time to take action.  The best thing we get from this movie though, is that the Earth will be fine.  Nature will make a comeback, with us or without us.  And that is what we’re looking at - an extinction, just like the others that have happened in history.  Onlyn this one will be caused by mankind, and will wipe out mankind.  As one interview subject in the films says:  “the Earth has all the time in the world.  We don’t”.