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A post by Maynard

Two noteworthy films. Neither are political films, and I’m not much interested in political films. Dammit, storytelling is the art of human drama, and an agenda is generally a distraction and a detraction. But I will say that I was sympathetic to the moral framework underlying both of these dramas.

Woody Allen has personal issues, but he is a brilliant filmmaker. He cranks out a lot of work, some of which leaves me cold, but the best is sublime. I would rank “Blue Jasmine” among the best.

“Blue Jasmine” is a dark tale. It tells the story of Jasmine, played by Cate Blanchett, who is the wife of a jailed Bernie Madoff-type character. Thus Jasmine has lost her husband, her fortune, her life. She descends upon her working-class sister to get through this difficult time.

Allen’s film is a peek into the soul of this intelligent and classy but neurotic and oblivious New Yorker who rose high and fell low. It captures the arrogance that creeps into the heads of the masters of the universe — that is to say, those damaged people at the top of the pile who justify their mastery based upon their perception of themselves as humanity’s benefactors. But this is no simple hatchet job. Jasmine is a complex mix. She’s an intriguing character, and we’re uncertain whether a bystander should give her a helping hand or slap her to the curb.

Another film, “The World’s End” is a strange bird. It’s an English import, and I had the advantage of seeing it with no foreknowledge of where it was going. To avoid giving away too much, I’ll only touch on the beginning. It opens as Gary, the main character, reflects back upon his graduation from high school, which was pretty much an evening of drunken debauchery. As he partook in the pleasures and excesses of that glorious night, he felt that life could get no better than this. And indeed, years later, he sullenly realizes that life has gotten no better; in fact it’s all been downhill. Yielding to a desperate impulse, he reaches out to his old friends and his old haunts, hoping to recover the lost magic and set his life on the track it should have followed.

I was hooked by that opening, and I was curious to see where Gary’s attempt to recapture his lost destiny might lead him. This is indeed a real-world concern; a concern that most of us can relate to, more or less. But Gary’s adventure goes…well, I’ll just say the story is an eclectic mix of humanity and, umm, odd challenges. It wrestles with very real problems in a very fantastic way. I found the film both very amusing and mildly relevant. And definitely very quirky.

In sum, and in the face of a season of (in my opinion) generally rotten movies, two gems.

Here are links to summaries of critics’ reviews of Blue Jasmine and The World’s End.