Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Whatever Works (2009)

Then Well, this was a surprise. Released nearly eighteen months ago in the US and having drifted around the world before reaching these shores, I’d given up on Whatever Works receiving a theatrical release, to the extent that for the purposes of this project I bought a copy of the blu-ray from the US on the assumption that it was region free (the “fact” of which had been heavily reported online). And it does play. Just long enough to put up a banner that says it won’t show the actual film on blu-ray players outside of the US. Which means that today, I saw a film for which I have a copy on my shelf already.

By co-incidence, Manchester’s Cornerhouse is showing Whatever Works alongside two films by directors clearly influenced by Woody Allen. Greenburg from Noah Baumbach who seems to be building a career out of remaking Interiors and the film I watched as the first part of a double bill Nicole Holofcener’s Please Give in which Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt play caustic Diane Keaton and Woody type characters and has Vicky Cristina’s Rebecca Hall and Melinda’s Amanda Peet. Like all of Holofcener’s film, it’s witty, tragic, thoughtful and about the guilt of privilege. Not unlike most of Woody's then too.

As ever this won't be a typical review, more of a poorly thought out first reaction which includes loads of spoilers. I know that won't be a problem for anyone outside of the UK.  But I'm still being cautious because this is a new release, so please do only read the following if you don't care either way.

Hello again.  Where was I?  Oh yes ...

Now Whatever Works is a treat, indeed the kind of rare treat which American film rarely offers these days. Yes, it’s raggedy in places, notably in its pacing, and there’s initially an eerie sense of Larry David trying to enforce his own style on words undoubtedly written for Woody himself, even if the director says he originally envisaged Zero Mostel from The Front, when he wrote it in the 1970s.

It's also often hilariously funny, though I’ll admit that it’s one of those later films which will only be of interest to his fans rather than passing trade, which seems to have been accepted by the studio who have replicated the US campaign and put Larry David front and centre on the poster rather than a shot of Evan Rachel Wood with barely anything on (which is her general repose in most of the film). For once, the poster indicates content, for better or worse.

The film certainly doesn’t deserve some of criticism that has been levelled at it, which I’m convinced would not have been had this been the first film by a promising director. The content of some of those reviews has been appalling, falling back on the old clichés of Woody telling a story about a May to December romance as though there’s something dirty about it (mentioning Soon-Yi in passing), or that it looks unfinished and under rehearsed (as though some of his earlier so-called classic films didn’t have those properties). Visiting Rotten Tomatoes with its 49% rating is like looking into the deep dark soul of the film reviewer.

Jason Solomans isn’t my favourite critic (I tend to think of him as the anti-Kermode), but he at least gave Whatever Works a glowing but balanced review in The Observer this past weekend making the point I have across much of this project that when critics talk about Woody’s “return to form” they miss the fact that he never lost it and that audiences may have been saying the same thing about Shakespeare because he didn’t ever quite better Hamlet.

Personally, the central thematic thread, that you should make the most of life and get love wherever you can, even if someone finds your choices socially unacceptable and that includes religion, hit me in the stomach. Allen’s trick is that however irascible and unpleasant David’s character Boris Yelnikoff is, forever calling himself a genius without much being able to demonstrate it, much of what he says is completely true.

We shouldn’t spend half our lives looking back on missed chances and poor choice and mistakes, we should just look to the now. Someone (bless them) has transcribed the longest and most perceptive speech for the IMDb’s memorable quotes page but much of it boils down to this later quote:

“That's why I can't say enough times, whatever love you can get and give, whatever happiness you can filch or provide, every temporary measure of grace, whatever works.”

If Woody did indeed resurrect an old 70s script, that also means that such criticism is being directed at work which originated in the very epoch they’re comparing it negatively to, the Interiors/Manhattan/Annie Hall axis. It’s not unknown for him to go back to work first created decades before – Manhattan Murder Mystery had its origins in Annie Hall and there was his Don’t Drink The Water remake. Certainly some elements, such as Patricia Clarkson’s enlightenment and drift into free love have a 70s ting to them, and the cd player in David’s apartment would be easily replaced by a vinyl turntable of the kind seen in Hannah and Her Sisters.

Knowing that the script has sat in a draw for a few decades, we can see how it’s subsequently influenced or been recycled in his later work. What is the central relationship between Boris and Melody but a more light hearted version of that between the misanthropic Frederick (Max Von Sydow) and Lee (Barbara Hershey) in Hannah and Her Sisters with the improvisational quality of the similar romance in Manhattan?

Characters have broken the fourth wall throughout his career, though admittedly not to the astoundingly metafictional excess seen here, with David commenting on the behaviour of the people in the auditorium, his eyes looking right through us. The unexpected arrival of the lingering matriarch crops up in Anything Else. Nothing is exactly the same, no repeated scenes, so I might simply be noticing familiar tropes, but it could demonstrate that no ideas are ever really lost.

To increase the sense that we’re in a mixed up crazy kinda wurld, Mark Kermode gave the film a poor review last Friday. He says he didn’t laugh once (and neither did the two other people in the screening) and suggested that Woody has lost his sense of place in relation to New York, giving the city a “tourists” view. Well, as Kermode might say, two things on this.

Firstly, the reason we get the tourist version of the city is that it's being seen through the eyes of newcomers – Melody first then later her mother. When the more domestic parts of the city are shown, it’s the city blocks that the reclusive Boris inhabits and refreshingly they’re not Katz’s or the familiar locations, but places which ordinary New Yorkers might go.

Secondly, back in my review of Melinda and Melinda I suggested that then Woody was completing his New York project, tying up loose thematic and auteur related ends ready for his European adventures by commemorating everything which had gone before. Oddly, even though this is a return to New York, nothing in Whatever Works dissuades me from that view, and not just because of its earlier provenance.

Not only is the use of locations jumbled, his previous musical rule of jazz for comedy and classical for drama is up the wall and in some places reversed (you can see what I mean from the soundtrack which is available on Spotify should you have the capacity). But in general because of all the southern visitors it is an outsider’s view of the city but unlike Kermode, I believe that it’s deliberate and was perhaps even heightened in the contemporary update of the script.

Structurally the film also very clearly changes tack half way through. The opening half is generally from Boris’s point of view, we’re granted flashbacks and given a blow-by-blow account of his life story and philosophical perspective. What we discover about in these early scenes about Evan Rachel Wood’s Melody is from their two-handers and his conversations with friends (apart from the one scene in which makes the date with the dog walker and goes on the failed date).

Then, about half way through, just after Boris replaces Melody's musical choice with Beethoven’s 5th, the story opens out not to just encompass her, but her mother’s story and later her father and with the few narrative important exceptions such as when he still talks to the viewer, we’re given the external view of Boris and what Melody thinks of their relationship, but because we’ve already had time to empathise with him, we're disappointed when she drifts away with Charles Brandon from The Tudors.

Actually, Henry Cavill has splashes of light humour as the dashing Englisher even if his character name, Randy, seems a bit misplaced. Indeed there isn't a terrible performance here, and though David threatens to overpower everyone if only in through sheer volume, Evan Rachel Wood (like Mira Sorvino before her) brings a genuine depth to a character who elsewhere might have simply been the blonde intellectual punching bag. Special mention too for Clarkson, who brings nuance to a figure who despite changing her entirely life's philosophy remains the same person at the core.

As this rush of late night words should indicate, Whatever Works was well worth the wait (cliché!). Aided by those wonderful performances and a shooting style very much geared towards the cinema (which is why I’m quite glad the blu-ray wouldn’t play in the end) it might not be one of Woody’s best films, but it’s certainly a piece I’d want to see again, if only to take in the nuances of some of Boris’s longer soliloquies which have a textual density rare seen in contemporary cinema.

Hopefully we won’t have to wait as long to see You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. Unless I take a Spanish holiday. It’s out there in August …