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Whatever Works

Woody Allen’s new film is called Whatever Works, which is supposed to be the lead character’s mantra. Although the title is perhaps more appropriate as Allen’s methodology concerning filmmaking than as a life philosophy. The character who utters those two words of wisdom is Boris Yellnikoff, a former physicist who sees the glass as empty and water as nothing more than a theoretical probability. However, Larry David plays Boris without a hint of intelligence. Boris’ dialogue is mainly comprised of loud spurts of pessimistic adjectives. The dialogue is more or less line reading as performed by David. Boris is more of a caricature than a character: neurotic, New York, intellectual, pessimistic Jew.

Speaking of New York, Whatever Works marks Woody Allen’s return to his city after a rather unsuccessful tryst in Europe. Allen’s back in Manhattan! Literally, as the plot for Whatever Works calls for Boris to fall in love with a woman nearly forty years younger than he is, in a relationship scenario eerily similar to that of Woody Allen’s own Manhattan. However, the young women in both films are different, to say the least. Melody (Evan Rachel Wood), the young ingénue of Whatever Works, is nothing like the Muriel Hemingway character in Manhattan. That character was an intellectual student who was more mature and self-confident than the protagonist played by Allen. Melody is a ditsy beauty pageant contestant from the South who is probably too stupid to know that people have ages and that Boris is older. And despite her name, she fails to appreciate the classical music that Boris attempts to expose her to, opting instead to attend concert performances by bands called Anal Sphincter. Meanwhile Allen once again provides a Dixieland jazz soundtrack, which is beginning to make it feel like he’s making a parody of his own films. If the relationship doesn’t appear to work on paper, that’s because Melody and Boris don’t exactly ignite sparks on the screen either. They have nothing to say to each other. No conversation, no common interests, and not even a few shared laughs. And then they’re married.

Allen doesn’t have much for these characters to do. Every scene is just the two of them eating in a different location in New York. Whatever Works hardly feels like a film at all. It’s more like a play. In fact, who needs these visuals at all? Although without the images as distraction, one might discover how vacuous the script is. And why does Woody Allen insist on working with the best contemporary cinematographers? This time Allen hired Harris Savides, whose work on films like Elephant, Zodiac, and Milk has established him as a craftsman of profound beauty and sensitivity. Here he does his best to make sure everyone is well lit and in focus.

Needless to say the characters run out of things to say, so halfway through a whole new crop of actors enter the picture. Patricia Clarkson comes in as Melody’s mother, who transforms into a Bohemian love goddess. Following her is Ed Bagley Jr. as Melody’s father. This character is so underdeveloped that it’s rather just a waste of time when we discover that he’s a closet homosexual. Allen’s point here is to provide further examples to justify his title, perhaps because Boris doesn’t really follow his own mantra. He says it to the camera every once in a while, but his life is really nothing more than being upset at everything, which really doesn’t work for him.

And in the end what are we left with? A happy ending that proposes that everyone can get along if we all do whatever works, which justifies Charles Manson’s existence, I suppose. There is a point when Boris talks to the audience and questions whether anyone is even in the theater. If he had addressed the audience as the suckers we are, members of a diminishing society, vainly hoping that Woody Allen will return to making films that deal with complex themes about the nature of life and realistic portrayals of relationships between men and women, then Allen would have made at least one insightful comment in this film. Anyone remember the days when Woody Allen made films concerning themes a bit deeper than a two word alliterated title?

-Jason Bardin

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