https://quillette.com/2020/04/21/woody-allens-apropos-of-nothing-a-review/
Me:
As it happens, I’m just near finished reading Allen’s bio, maybe 25 pages or so to go, and I’ve been talking about it some with friends, including one friend who raves about it. I don’t. Nor do I like it as much as Evanier does, though I think it’s ok.
I’ll say that I’m one who doesn’t believe any of Mia Farrow’s charges against Allen, impressed as I am by Moses Farrow’s account of how monstrous she was and is, by his exoneration by the two long, thorough and expert investigations into the allegations, by Farrow’s failed attempt to void Allen’s adoption of Moses and Dylan, by no criminal charges and by Allen’s ability to adopt two baby girls despite the Farrow allegations, those adoptions requiring he be vetted by a different judge for each adoption.
The book is marred by too many one liners that don’t have the snap, crackle and pop of Allen’s original (especially stand up) comic brilliance.
It’s marred by Allen trying too hard to project an image of himself as a kind of unintellectual, street hustling, down to earth type of cracking-wise guy.
It’s marred by way too much self deprecation that finally comes across as humble-brag, especially as Allen keeps peppering his writing with all kinds of obscure references spanning the arts and sciences and as he keeps up an enormous amount of name checking to show us how widely and deeply he has taken in the arts and culture. He’s got the intellectual insecurity of an autodidact who never got beyond high school, which Allen didn’t, getting turfed out of NYU after one failed year.
It’s marred by his repeated jejune world view that life is “nasty, brutish and short,” compounded by his view that existence is meaningless, desperate and despair making. In all this he sounds like a college freshman who’s just read Sartre lying on his high thread count sheets in his comfy college dorm room with its fridge and pantry well stocked with expensive items courtesy of mummy and daddy, the fridge located right beside his new wall unit 64” flat screen smart tv.
His life belies his sincerity here.
And it’s marred as well by about its final 1/5th or so that’s pure gush about all the actors and actresses and others with whom he’s worked. And that 1/5th is without any insight or charm that might redeem the gushing.
And yet, despite all that mars it, the book is an easy, clever, fun, interesting and on occasion touching read.
As to this review, I’ve highlighted a few of the things said, not all, that struck me and I comment on them.
“He is not a sociable creature and calls himself a misanthrope.”
Allen certainly says this about himself. And yet, we’re adorned with recounting after recounting of all his friends, of all his constant socializing, of all the rich, famous and powerful people he’s met, befriended, dined with. Idiosyncratic and neurotic, he certainly comes across as, but as a misanthrope he does not.
———
“By planting the nude pictures of Soon-Yi, Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, where she would be likely to find them, Allen acted cruelly and never really looked back.”
This is at odds with Allen’s account of how the pictures were left on his mantle piece by accident and by how contingent were the circumstances of Farrow finding them. Evanier may not believe Allen’s account. But he in fairness owes Allen the benefit of his own explanation. That should come first with Evanier’s own opinion and reasons why he disbelieves Allen coming second.
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“And, most famous of all, there is Mia Farrow and her discovery of the nude pictures of Soon-Yi. In a way this was Allen’s ultimate taunt. It was unconscionable.”
See my above comment.
———-
“He would incorporate some of those memories into his comic masterpiece, Broadway Danny Rose.”
Not only do I agree with this but it’s also my favorite Allen movie.
——-
“I was struck by the cascade of films he’s created, over 50 of them, 25 among the best work any director has given us in the last 60 years.
...
His greatest film, Crimes and Misdemeanors, came soon after.”
This is critical nonsense. There is no Allen picture, not one of them, that enters the pantheon of the greatest films of the last 60 years. At best his best films are some combination of funny, inventive, clever, touching and hugely entertaining. But their tendency to be thin, formulaic, lacking in scope, emotional and intellectual depth and gravity counts against any greatness. And generally in film, comedies do not rank as among what are considered great films.
If we think of movies like Godfather 2, Letters From Iwo Jima, Bridge On The River Kwai, Apocalypse Now, The Unforgiven, West Side Story, Boyhood, The Deer Hunter, The Revenant, Roma, Once Upon A Time In...Hollywood—and throw in Some Like It Hot, though I wouldn’t—just to name a few I consider great, not one movie by Allen comes close to any of them.
Moreover, his attempts at being dramatic, as he acknowledges, were flops.
And if, big if, Crimes And Misdemeanours is his greatest film—let’s say it is for argument’s sake, and I agree it is pretty good—Allen in his bio analyses its flaws, his mashing up the serious half with the comic half, his wishing he’d focused on the former at the expense of the latter, since the latter, he says, took away from the former.
And in the most standout performance of any of his films, Cate Blanchett’s bravura performance in Blue Jasmine, right up there with Vivian Leigh as Blanche Dubois, she highlights by contrast how comparably flat and typically Allenesque the rest of the movie is. She simply by her brilliance elevates its quality. Allen says himself that Blue Jasmine doesn’t really totally come off.
Allen in his own words: “How would I sum up my life? Lucky. Many stupid mistakes bailed out by luck. My biggest regret? Only that I’ve been given millions to make movies, total artistic control, and I never made a great film.”
50 movies by Allen, give or take: clearly being prolific does not of itself for greatness make.
————
“There is no doubt in my mind from Allen’s account that he deeply loved Ronan, once called Satchel, and Dylan and Moses, his adopted son who has confirmed Allen’s account of what transpired with Mia. His pain at being separated from Dylan and Ronan is palpable in this memoir.”
Here I agree, (though Allen’s focus is on the pain of what’s in effect his loss of Dylan as his daughter more so than Satchel/Ronan.) His sadness is genuinely palpable. It’s the book’s unintended emotional centre. I felt this pain whereas while he keeps stressing his deep love for his wife, Soon-Yi, and I believe it, he doesn’t make me feel it.
—————-
“The key to Allen can be found in his discussion of one of his most brilliant films, Zelig. He writes that the film “was about how we all want to be accepted, to fit in, to not offend, that we often present a different person to different people knowing which person it might best please.” Allen, in the totality of his life and career, has had the strength and centeredness to avoid those traps. But his love appears to be primarily for his art.”
Evanier here is being reductive and arbitrary rather than penetratingly incisive. Allen’s singularity in his art in opposition to the sentiment in this quote from Zelig is no more the key to Allen, than is his conformity to or deviation from any other number of limitless quotes that could be plucked from his vast store of films in a pretentious attempt to announce, “I’ve got the key.” That he is insistent on the way he does his films without interference is certainly remarkable but many things are remarkable about him. To pose any one thing as the key may get one through a door or two but many others will remain inaccessibly locked by means of that key.
P.S. I noted above that I hadn’t quite finished reading APropos Of Nothing. Now I have. And thankfully it ends on a strong, impassioned note after all the book end’s slush of gush.
Allen is called on to defend himself yet again due to the renewal by the Farrow Three, Mia, Dylan and Satchel/Ronan, of the absurd charge that he molested Dylan when she was seven. The renewal got life from #metoo and flew yet again, this time under its aegis.
In a few powerful pages at book’s end, however, Allen lays bare the cowardice of celebrity know nothings (bandwagon clingers) who celebrate themselves in proclaiming his guilt and their refusal to associate with him as yet again the poison of narrative displaces actuality, the truth of facts.
The poison is fed by the lunatic excesses of #metoo, where guilt by accusation prevails and where the idiocies asserted by idiots, like the mind numbing notion that all women must be believed, mind-blowingly get credence.
All too few speak out in behalf of Allen, while those who’ve jumped on the anti Allen narrative bandwagon know not of what they flagellate.
Allen’s indubitability as to the fact of his innocence fuels the righteousness of his passion. And we feel it.
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