2/22/15: Growing Up, Moving On

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2014 Academy Awards, 87th Annual Academy Awards, absentee father, abusive relationships, Andrew Villarreal, Barbara Chisholm, Best Director nominee, Best Film Editing nominee, Best Original Screenplay nominee, Best Picture nominee, Best Supporting Actor nominee, Best Supporting Actress winner, Boyhood, Brad Hawkins, brother-sister relationships, Cambell Westmoreland, Cassidy Johnson, Charlie Sexton, cinema, coming of age, divorced parents, dramas, dysfunctional family, Elijah Smith, Ellar Coltrane, Ethan Hawke, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, Jamie Howard, Jenni Tooley, Jessi Mechler, Libby Villari, Lorelei Linklater, Marco Perella, mother-son relationships, Movies, multiple award nominee, Patricia Arquette, relationship, Richard Linklater, single mother, Sinjin Venegas, Steven Prince, Tom McTigue, Zoe Graham

From the outside, indie film wunderkind Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014) seems like a pretty impossible endeavor: filmed over the course of 12 years with the same cast, the film purports to follow young Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from his childhood all the way to his 18th birthday, as he leaves for college. Along the way, we get to witness Mason (and his family) growing up before our very eyes, the passage of time marked by such, real-world indicators as growing taller, sprouting facial hair or any of the endless ways in which children become adults. It’s an impressive bit of filmcraft, no two ways about it, the kind of thing that would, no doubt, earn an appreciative thumbs-up from an experimental filmmaker like Terrence Malick. While the final result ends up being no different from a thousand other coming of age tales, it does nothing to take away from Linklater’s achievement: as the press states, there really hasn’t been another film like this and it’s doubtful there will be another quite like it in the future.

Structured in a loosely chronological manner, albeit one devoid of any easy time demarcations (there are no “Two years later” notes, time/date indicators or anything so obvious, although the use of pop music and culture helps to ground the film’s time-frame in a thoroughly organic manner), we follow young Mason, his slightly older sister, Samantha (Lorelei Linklater), his single mother, Liv (Patricia Arquette) and his absentee father, Mason Senior (Ethan Hawke), as they all go about the process of living their lives. Samantha begins as a shrill, obnoxious kid and grows into a smart, droll and laid-back young woman. We watch Liv’s journey as she progresses from divorced, single mother to new college student and, later, college professor: along the way, she bounces from one bad, abusive relationship to the next, first with her alcoholic professor/husband, Bill (Marco Perella), later with a damaged, former soldier (Brad Hawkins). We see how Mason Senior moves from an aimless, perpetually restless, politically-active roustabout to a centered, responsible fellow with a new family and a desire to get it all right, at least the second time around.

The majority of our focus, of course, is reserved for the film’s subject, young Mason. We follow him through all the vagaries of childhood: first love, schoolyard bullies, family problems, sibling rivalries, making (and losing) friends, developing his own interests and viewpoints (albeit with more than a little influence from his father’s fiery rhetoric) and, finally, leaving the nest to strike out into the world and make his own mark. Through it all, Coltrane proves to be a more than capable actor, as comfortable with the film’s bigger emotional beats (the abusive home situation) as he is with the subtler ones (the scene where he hangs out in an abandoned house with older boys and talks about girls, for one). It’s to Coltrane’s great credit that the young performer always feels authentic: there’s an inherent danger with child actors that they’ll come across as stiff or unrealistic but that’s never a problem here.

To be honest, aside from the over-familiarity of the film, there’s very little to complain about here. The acting is uniformly solid, even if none of the performances really distinguish themselves from the others: while Arquette won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance here, all of the acting is similarly realistic…there were no real standouts, at least from my perspective. The film looks great, with some nice, vibrant colors and the sound design is quite exceptional: the film is very music-oriented (as is much of Linklater’s output) and the use of pop music to establish the time-frame is nicely realized.

Personally, I’ve never been the biggest Linklater fan: I’ve always found Slacker (1991) to be thoroughly underwhelming and Dazed and Confused (1993) has always placed well behind Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) in my personal playbook. To be honest, my favorite Linklater film is actually Bernie (2011), which is probably the least representative film in his canon. My major issue has always been that his films seem more content to keep up a constant verbal barrage than to actually mean anything: it’s always come across as a ridiculously pompous combination of Kevin Smith and John Cassavetes, at least to my non-discerning ears. While Boyhood is less guilty of this than past films, there’s still plenty of wheel-spinning, especially once we get to Mason’s numerous “philosophical” discussions with girlfriend Sheena (Zoe Graham).

Ultimately, I enjoyed Boyhood, although I certainly wouldn’t rank it as one of the best films of 2014: minus the “twelve years” gimmick, there really wasn’t anything here that I hadn’t seen before, certainly no great “insights” into growing up. In many ways, this was very much a basic coming-of-age film with a slightly glossier top-coat. I was also rather unhappy that Arquette’s character, essentially, was summed up by her various bad relationship choices: it seems slightly mean-spirited that the film allows her to progress from single mother to student to college professor, only for her to keep making the exact same relationship mistakes at each and every turn. It’s almost as if the film is saying that no matter how much Liv progresses, learns or grows, she’s still just a woman who needs a guy in order to feel complete…and can’t even pick a “good” one, to boot. Her final breakdown seems even more reductive, in this light, as if her entire life is defined by others, whether husbands, boyfriends or her own kids.

There’s a lot to like here, without a doubt: very rarely has a family/relationship drama felt this realistic and the actors all have tremendous chemistry together. At the end of the day, however, Boyhood is not appreciably better (or more insightful) than any number of similar films: at the end of the day, I have to wonder…was it worth the twelve years?

3/15/14: Just a Couple Good Old Boys

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actor-director, Altamont, America, American Dream, Best Original Screenplay nominee, Best Supporting Actor nominee, bikers, Billy, Bob Dylan, Born to Be Wild, buddy films, Captain America, Charles Manson, cinema, classic movies, counter-culture films, counterculture, Dennis Hopper, directorial debut, Easy Rider, end of an era, film reviews, films, friendship, hippies, Hoyt Axton, Jack Nicholson, Luke Askew, Mardi Gras, motorcycles, Movies, Oscar nominee, Palme d'Or nominee, Peter Fonda, Phil Spector, rednecks, road movie, road trips, Sharon Tate, Steppenwolf, the American Dream, the Manson Family, The Pusher, Wyatt

When, exactly, did the Summer of Love go up in flames? Conventional wisdom usually points to Altamont, in December 1969, as the point where the promise of free love and hippy Utopianism soured. For my money, though, I always pinpointed Sharon Tate’s murder, on August 9th of the same year, as the real tipping point. Even though the Woodstock festival (usually seen as the pinnacle of “hippyism”) would follow Tate’s murder by less than a week, I always viewed that as sneaking one last one in before Manson and his followers nailed down the coffin lid. By the time the Mason family had cemented their terrible legacy, it was pretty apparent that the shiny red apple of peace, love and harmony contained more than its fair share of rot. While Altamont may have slammed the door shut, it had begun to close long before then. In fact, some folks could see the end way before then: when Dennis Hopper’s now-iconic Easy Rider was first released, in May 1969, who could know that the man would seem like Nostradamus a mere seven months later?

Easy Rider is many things: a buddy film…a road movie…a counter-culture landmark…a return to the sensibilities of On the Road at a time when that attitude seemed not only passe but quaint…a drug movie…a critique of the fractured America of the ’60s…More than anything, however, Easy Rider serves as a death knell, a dire warning from one of the original “freak-flag-flyers” that times were changing and that the peace-and-love hippies were about to be swept from the Earth in the same way that the dinosaurs once were. You could stay the same, he posited, but you would die: that was a given. You could, of course, leave behind your ideals and survive by evolving into something else entirely, something colder, more calculating, less romantic. But isn’t this, in the end, the same sort of death as offered in the first option? Above all else, however, Hopper was making concrete the words of Bob Dylan, albeit casting them in a much darker light than Dylan originally intended: the times, indeed, were a changin’.

As a film, Easy Rider has a pretty simple structure: it’s essentially a series of vignettes featuring Billy (Dennis Hopper) and Wyatt (Peter Fonda), usually addressed as “Captain America.” As the two men travel around the back-roads of America, they meet with an odd assortment of characters, including a hitchhiker (Luke Askew) and his hippy commune, a drunken lawyer (Jack Nicholson), lots of rednecks and some good, old-fashioned, middle-American squares. They sell cocaine to Phil Spector (not the “person” of Phil Spector but the actual man: he’s billed as “The Connection” and wears one seriously yellow suit, complete with matching gloves and glasses), visit a whorehouse in New Orleans and leave a diner one step ahead of an angry mob of rednecks and small-town cops.

For the most parts, events in the film fall into a pretty basic formula: the duo rides to a new place, Billy acts like a square, the Captain tells him to chill out, there’s a musical interlude and the whole thing repeats. Each interlude, however, serves as a way for Hopper (who also wrote the screenplay, with Fonda) to dig a little deeper into the whole notion of the “American Dream.” The opening pre-credits drug-dealing sequence begins with Steppenwolf’s version of “The Pusher,” before their iconic “Born to Be Wild” slams us right into the credits. It’s a subtle way to establish Billy and the Captain’s manifesto (they do whatever they want, man), while also commenting on changes in the pop culture zeitgeist: “The Pusher” was written by Hoyt Axton, a popular folk singer in the early ’60s but it was Steppenwolf’s cover, not the original, that Hopper used. As one of the “heavier” new bands to emerge in the late ’60s, Steppenwolf was a good representation of the direction music was taking, at the time, away from the folk and early rock of the ’60s and into the hard rock and metal of the ’70s. Steppenwolf was pushing Axton out, just as the darker mid-late ’60s was crowding out the peace and optimism of the earlier part of the decade.

They end up on the hitchhiker’s commune but don’t get to stay long: the hippies end up picking on and ostracizing Billy, leading us to the notion that maybe these “peaceniks” aren’t quite as nice as they first seem. Although he couldn’t have known it at the time, Hopper was prophesying what would happen with the Manson family: the hippy exterior concealed a dangerous, deranged interior. Lest it be thought that Hopper is unduly picking on the counterculture (which is rather absurd, since he’s been a genuine, card-carrying member of the counterculture for his entire life/career), we also get scenes like the ones where Billy and the Captain get arrested for “parading without a permit” in a small town and are, essentially, chased out of a diner by a group of locals (including the sheriff) that are a few pitchforks away from the mob in Frankenstein. If the counterculture isn’t necessarily who they say they are, then the average middle-American “square” is exactly what they seem to be: small-minded, suspicious, frightened and utterly resentful of the “freedom” that Billy and the Captain represent. That these small-town folk and rednecks will, ultimately, end up being the undoing of Billy, the Captain and George (Nicholson) is certainly telling: although the counterculture has begun to collapse from the inside, its greatest threat still comes from the outside – the world at large.

All of these events eventually culminate in a truly apocalyptic ending for Billy and the Captain (and poor George, of course), although it’s a finale that would probably only provoke a shrug from the kinds of people who helped perpetrate it: those long-haired, weird bastards got what was coming to them. While the finale few moments of Easy Rider holds the answer to Billy and the Captain’s fates, it’s a moment just before that actually spells everything out for an entire generation. After finally achieving their “goal” of visiting New Orleans for Mardi Gras and surviving everything that came before, Billy is absolutely triumphant: they’re both “rich” now, thanks to the opening drug deal and have finally “made it.” “That’s what you do, man,” he tells the Captain, “you go for the big money.” The Captain’s response, however, takes the wind out of not only Billy’s sails but our own, as well: “We blew it, man.” By compromising their principles and losing sight of the “big picture” (changing the world for the better), Billy and the Captain (along with the entire “Free Love” movement) have truly “blown it.” The true extent wouldn’t be felt for some time, of course, but the writing was on the wall: whatever moment might have existed was now past and the movement would continue to spin out into irrelevance.

As a pivotal moment in the history of the counterculture, Easy Rider, much like Kerouac’s On the Road, cannot be easily discounted. Although certain elements have, by necessity, become dated, the overall themes and angles of the film hold up surprisingly well. As a film, Easy Rider is quite good, with sterling performances from Hopper, Fonda and Nicholson, along with some excellent cinematography that is reminiscent of the same year’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It’s always a hoot to see Hopper play the “straight” guy, particularly with the decades of crazy characters that would come after this. Nicholson, in particular, is excellent, providing yet another example of why he became one of the most beloved actors of all time. There’s a sense of playfulness that easily recalls Depp’s work in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, although Nicholson owned this type of role for some time before Depp wandered down Jump Street.

If there can be any complaints, it would have to be that the film definitely becomes formulaic well before the ending, although the final 15 minutes are still some of the most powerful film moments ever. Even though the film seems a bit dated now (the commune scene, in particular, is of its era, complete with a truly bizarre mime performance and some really hippy-dippy philosophizing), it’s held up much better than similar films of the era, such as Fonda’s ultra-silly The Trip from a few years earlier. In the end, Easy Rider exists as both a fascinating curio of a forgotten era and a timely reminder that we must be ever vigilant, if we hope to truly change the world. As Sisyphus knew, the moment you quit pushing forward and forging new ground is the moment where the boulder begins to slide back down the hill. In the ’60s, the hippies managed to push the rock quite a ways up the hill. The tragedy, of course, is that it crushed them all on the way back down.

2/26/14: When You’re Here, You’re Home (Oscar Bait, Part 10)

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2013 Academy Awards, 86th Annual Academy Awards, alcoholism, Alexander Payne, auteur theory, Best Actor nominee, Best Cinematography nominee, Best Director nominee, Best of 2013, Best Original Screenplay nominee, Best Picture nominee, Best Supporting Actress nominee, Bob Odenkirk, Boogie Nights, Bruce Dern, cinema, Citizen Ruth, dementia, Election, estranged family, Film, Film auteurs, film reviews, growing old, grown children, Heartland, indie comedies, indie dramas, June Squibb, Midwestern, Movies, Nebraska, old age, road movie, road trips, small town life, snubbed at the Oscars, Stacy Keach, sweepstakes, The Descendants, Will Forte, Woody Grant

Realistically, there’s no such thing as a “perfect” anything, much less a perfect film. After all: one person’s concept of “amazing” is always someone else’s notion of “played-out.” That perfect hamburger? How do you know? If it were truly perfect, would it ever actually end? Wouldn’t that perfect sunset just continue on into infinity? Can humans, inherently faulty as we are, ever actually make something perfect? Could robots? What does “perfect” even mean? Is it as meaningless as “awesome” and “epic” in the Aught Tens? I bring up these points for one simple reason: I consider Alexander Payne’s Nebraska to be, essentially, a perfect film. I believe this through and through, even though all of the evidence points to how impossible it is. There is nothing perfect, although Nebraska is as perfect as it comes. This makes absolutely no sense…and I’m totally okay with that.

Some films hit me on a more pure, elemental level then other films. One of the best examples of this I can think of is PT Anderson’s Boogie Nights. I’ll never forget seeing that for the first time, in the theater, and just sitting there in stunned silence. I felt like I couldn’t even process the film on the first viewing: I could only sit back and absorb it. Immediately afterward, I bought another ticket and stayed for the next showing. To this day, I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve seen Boogie Nights but it never fails to impress me and lift my spirits: the film is a complete masterpiece and was from opening night. My first experience with seeing Nebraska was nearly identical to my experience seeing Boogie Nights. I was immediately, completely and totally in love with the film from the jump and this impression gradually broadened and deepened into something approaching blind faith: I not only loved what I was currently seeing but I was positive I would love everything still to come. And I did.

Payne, one of modern filmmaking’s brightest talents, is no stranger to the prickly ways in which humans, particularly relatives, interact. His filmography may not be huge but it is ridiculously deep: Citizen Ruth, Election (another of my favorite films), About Schmidt, Sideways, the Descendants (another Oscar favorite) and Nebraska. Any of these would be a bright star in most writer/director careers but Payne’s CV is quite the embarrassment of riches. With Nebraska, however, he’s managed to hone the “Heartland shiv” of Election and Citizen Ruth into a merciless edge while adding in the richly textured familial issues of The Descendants. In the process, he’s crafted his best, most enduring film (thus far).

In a cinematic universe of “difficult” people, Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) might be their supreme leader. Hard-drinking, stubborn, suffering from the first pangs of dementia and brutally honest, Woody is the kind of person who seems to exist solely to vex his loved ones. And vex them, he does. His long-suffering wife, Kate (June Squibb), and grown sons David (Will Forte) and Ross (Bob Odenkirk) have had just about as much of them as they can take: Kate, in particular, has taken to treating Woody like a flop-eared hound that won’t quit piddling on the rug. The thing is: Woody is one genuinely difficult dude. Not just prickly, mind you: genuinely difficult. When he receives one of those ubiquitous “You may already be a winner!” sweepstakes notices, he decides to walk from his home in Montana all the way to Lincoln, Nebraska, to claim his “winnings.” Rather than have his father drop dead on the side of the road (and unable to convince him of the truth behind the sweepstakes), David decides to go with his dad and make it a father-son bonding trip. The stage is set for a sweet, nostalgic, heart-warming tale of reconciliation and family…except Woody couldn’t give two shits about his family and certainly doesn’t look forward to being stuck with his square son David. Tempers flare, hard truths are learned and David learns the most important lesson of all: You can’t always pick your fights and you can never pick your family. But, sometimes, that’s okay.

Picking out one individual aspect of Nebraska to laud is not only nearly impossible but unnecessarily reductive. The individual aspects of the film truly shine but it’s the sum of these parts that makes Nebraska an unmitigated classic. Right from the get-go, with the gorgeous black-and-white cinematography and the hauntingly simple but beautiful bluegrassy theme, the film felt timeless. Indeed, the film was so stunningly filmed that I was certain it would be a lock for cinematography, Gravity be damned. The camera-work in Gravity was flawless and head-scratching (how the hell DID they do that?) but the cinematography in Nebraska is beautifully evocative and so cinematic that it hurts. This was a film that looked as good as it “felt,” a perfect synthesis of form and function.

As is standard in Payne’s films, the acting is absolutely superb. In fact…here comes that word again…it’s pretty much perfect. Will Forte, so good as a comic, is a complete revelation as David. At once sympathetic, sweet and slightly pathetic, David is a fully realized, complex character, someone who all of us know (if we aren’t actually him, that is). Bob Odenkirk is marvelous as brother Ross, likewise reigning in his comedic tendencies to portray a character who’s equal parts fatigued snark and genuine compassion. It’s as far from Saul Goodman as possible and never less than 100% authentic. Stacy Keach has a terrific part as Woody’s former friend, Ed, a loutish civic leader who browbeats Woody mercilessly yet manages one of the most heartbreaking displays of emotion I’ve ever seen in a film: the part where he mockingly reads Woody’s letter to the bar is powerful stuff but the changing expression in his eyes as he realizes what he’s done to Woody is the stuff of legend. Keach has been far too scarce in films these days (I actually thought he was dead!) and it’s a tremendous shame: someone get this guy some more roles STAT!

In a cast this excellent, this perfect, however, there are still two standouts, two performers that brought completely indelible characters to life. June Squibb, as Kate, is a complete revelation, an actress so watchable, so absolutely compelling, that I find myself wondering why I never noticed her before. Kate is a real person: an honest-to-God flesh and blood creation. I know several people like Kate: many of them are also my family members. You know many people like Kate: some of them are likely your family, as well. As a character, she’s flawed, sometimes reveling in a level of nasty “honesty” that’s breathtaking in its cruelty. The scene where she visits the family cemetery with Woody and David is amazing, one of those scenes that film fans should remember in the same way that they do the “Hold it between your knees” scene from 5  Easy Pieces. As she walks about the graveyard, Kate keeps a constant running commentary about their interred relatives: this one was a slut, that one was an idiot, this other one always wanted to “get in her pants.” In the piece de resistance, however, Kate stops before the grave of a former beau, hikes up her skirt and stands before the tombstone: “See what you could have had if you didn’t talk about weed all the time?!” It’s a vulgar, hilarious, awesome moment, one of those bits that deserves to go down in cinematic history. While I was happy to see Nyong’o win Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars, Squibb was, hands-down, the best of the four performances I saw (sorry Julia: Osage was a bit hard to get ahold of).

And then, of course, there’s Bruce Dern. To be honest, I’m not sure how much acting Dern did for the film: perhaps that’s why he ended up losing to McConaughey (who also completely deserved the award, ironically). Perhaps this is how Dern really is. Perhaps he’s nothing like this. At the end of the day, there’s only one thing I knew: this was the single most perfect acting performance of the entire year. The whole thing. Better than McConaughey (who was astounding), better than Ejiofor. Better than anyone, actually. At no point in the film did it ever feel like Dern was acting. Nothing felt inauthentic, every beat and facial expression was well-earned and it was that rarest of modern acting performances: a stellar turn that did not revolve around flawless mimicry (sorry, Meryl). Perhaps it’s because of my own experiences with an elderly father but I completely identified with everything about both Woody and David: I experienced the same measure of heartwarming/breaking that I did in real life. If you have no experience with elderly parents, perhaps you won’t be affected as deeply. With acting this masterful, however, I’m betting you will.

So we have a great looking/sounding film and amazing performances. What else is there? Well, how about the funniest, freshest, funkiest script in ages? While Nebraska is anything but a joke-a-minute laughathon, it is shockingly funny, more so than any indie “dramedy” I’ve yet seen. Much of the humor definitely comes from the verisimilitude of the absurd situations (I laughed like an idiot during the scene where David’s yokel cousins mock him for taking so long to drive there, since I’ve had that exact same conversation with similar idiots in the past) but there’s just as many great one-liners and exchanges flying around. One of my favorite scenes has to be the one where Woody, Kate and David eat lunch in a small diner. Woody spends an inordinate amount of time studying the menu. When Kate asks him, “What are you having, old man?” he resolutely replies “Meatloaf.” Her exasperated comeback could have come straight from my childhood: “You’ve been staring at that menu for ten minutes…where does it say meatloaf?”At another point, David tells Woody that “All of your brothers are coming over.” “Some of them are dead.” David looks at Woody, for a beat, before replying: “The dead ones won’t be coming over.” Classic.

All of these various elements would be impressive enough but the one thing uniting them all is the most important: heart. Nebraska has a big heart, much bigger than the gently mean sarcasm would have you believe. You can see the genuine emotion creeping at the edge of every frame, sneaking into each scene like an insistent boom mic. The emotion isn’t always on the forefront but, when it is, the film burns with an almost palpable sense of pain. If you don’t feel something when Kate sits as Woody’s bedside, you probably don’t have much to feel. If you don’t tear up at the end, as David lets him father drive triumphantly through town, you’re probably already dead.

In the end, Nebraska is that most impossible of films: a scruffy, mean, hilarious, heartfelt celebration of the Heartland and all of the people who inhabit it. There are no characters here, only real people reacting with the same pain, humor, bias, hatred and love that we all do. Whereas every other film that I saw for Oscar season (including the otherwise incredible Dallas Buyers Club) struggled with notions of authenticity, Nebraska was the only one that I bought part and parcel. Like I said before: I know these people. I grew up with them. I probably love and hate them with equal fervor. If there were major flaws with the film, I couldn’t find them. If you can, I’m guessing we’ll probably never see completely eye to eye. That’s okay, though: there are no perfect films, so you, but Nebraska is just perfect enough for me.

2/24/14: We All Go a Little Mad (Oscar Bait, Part 8)

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2013 Academy Awards, Alec Baldwin, Andrew Dice Clay, Annie Hall, auteur theory, Best Actress nominee, Best Actress Winner, Best of 2013, Best Original Screenplay nominee, Best Supporting Actress nominee, Blue Jasmine, Cate Blanchett, cinema, despression, drama, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Ginger, investment fraud, Jasmine, Louis CK, mental illness, narcissism, Oscar nominee, Oscars, Peter Sarsgaard, Sally Hawkins, socialite, Stardust Memories, white-collar-crime, Woody Allen, writer-director

My quest to catch up continues as we now enter the week before the Academy Awards. Journey with me now to a distant past, one where we could still only speculate as to any given winner, a time when The Act of Killing seemed like a lock for Best Doc and “Alright, alright, alright” was only something that an impatient person might say. The week leading up to the Oscars was jam-packed with nominated films. The first one up? Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine.

Who among us really enjoys hanging out with fractured, damaged individuals? Not tolerates, mind you, or “does one’s duty” but actually spends time with a complete mess and has a great time? The answer, I’m relatively positive, would be that very few people, aside from masochists, actually derive any real pleasure from neurotic, morose, over-emotional basket-cases. Who among us, however, enjoys watching these individuals from the (relative) comfort and safety of our living rooms? That answer, at least judging by our collective viewing habits, would be quite different. Damaged people make terrible friends but they make really great fodder for entertainment, especially when springing from the fully loaded imagination of Mr. Neurotic himself, Woody Allen.

As a filmmaker, Allen is almost a cottage industry, bringing audiences decade after decade of schlubs, nebbishes, jerks, wallflowers, social misfits and generally unpleasant people. That he’s managed to present these characters for nearly 50 years is impressive enough but Allen has (usually) managed the rather nifty hat-trick of making these fractured folks at least somewhat likable. At the very least, these are people that we recognize (whether or not we recognize them from the mirror, however, is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish), friends, neighbors and family that drive us to distraction but still, for some reason, deserve our love at the end of the day.

Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen’s 44th feature film (yikes!), introduces us to one of his most prickly, unpleasant creations: Jasmine (Cate Blanchett). In an Allen multiverse filled with neurotic characters, Jasmine may just reign as their queen. We first meet her overwhelming an old lady on a plane with her life-story, a bludgeoning than continues all the way onto the tarmac and into baggage claim. Jasmine never stops talking and the old lady never has a chance to do much of anything but smile politely and nod. Once they separate, the old woman’s husband asks her about Jasmine, only to be told that she seemed to be talking to herself. One encounter in, we get the message loud and clear: Jasmine is her own best friend and worst enemy.

Jasmine goes to stay with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), which is a decided change from the old days when Jasmine and her white-collar-criminal husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin), were on top of the New York social scene. Many defrauded investors and a prison-stay for Hal (where he hangs himself) later, Ginger and her new boyfriend, Chili (Bobby Canavale) must help to take care of the penniless, clueless Jasmine. Just as spoiled, privileged and nasty as she was back in the “good ol’ days” but with none of the money and fancy apartments to back it up, Jasmine must, somehow, integrate herself into a world that is not only frightening and mystifying but most certainly beneath her. As Jasmine sails from one unpleasant realization to another, she comes to see that the people you step on while you climb are the same people who end up stepping on you. Will she learn the lesson too late or is there still hope for this entitled twit?

In a long career filled with buoyant highs (Annie Hall, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Radio Days), Blue Jasmine easily stands as one of Woody Allen’s finest films. In fact, the film was probably my favorite Allen film since Radio Days and easily stands tall next to his established classics. As usual with Allen’s films, the various ingredients poured into this make all the difference in the final product. Start with a smart, sharp script that graces everyone in the cast with some truly juicy dialogue. Add in one of those stereotypically far-reaching, all-star Woody Allen ensembles (Blanchett, Baldwin, Hawkins, Andrew Dice Clay, Louis CK, Peter Sarsgaard, et al). Mix in some incredibly complex characterizations and voila! You have one Blue Jasmine.

In a film filled with great performances, however, three actors really stand out: Blanchett, Hawkins and Clay. Blanchett ended up winning the Academy Award for Best Actress and the choice was a complete no-brainer: no matter how good any of the other nominees were, Blanchett was just that much better. Period. I’m not even a huge fan of hers, to be honest, and I found her entire performance to be utterly captivating and impossible to look away from. While Jasmine is not a likable character, she is a completely relateable one, a person that we’ve all known and (perhaps) been. It’s to Blanchett’s tremendous credit that she makes the finale such a complete punch in the gut: without her fearless, withering performance, the final twist (and it is a twist, folks, almost as nifty as the ones Shyamalan used to pull off) would have nearly the impact. As it was, the final shot had me completely devastated: she’d already won the statue by that point, as far as I’m concerned. Initially, I thought that Blanchett’s Jasmine would serve as this film’s Allen stand-in but she ends up being even more irreparably damaged than his protagonists usually are: this is the dark side of the neuroticism he normally traffics in.

Sally Hawkins, although not as dynamic as Blanchett, does amazing things with the potentially thankless role of sister Ginger. There is real pain in Hawkins performance, along with a surprising amount of self-assurance and joy. For the most part, Ginger is marginalized by everyone around her and it would be the easiest thing in the world for her to shut down and play the victim, as Jasmine so readily does. Instead of that, however, Ginger continues to love and keep her heart open, despite the constant negative reinforcement she receives from guys like Chili and Al (Louis CK). Blue Jasmine was never Ginger’s movie but it’s a film that wouldn’t exist without her, at least not with the same kind of soul and passion. Although I didn’t feel that Hawkins performance was the best of the year, I was still overjoyed to see her at least acknowledged with a nomination. Any actor was going to stand in Blanchett’s shadow on this one but Hawkins managed to hold her own.

In the complete surprise category, however, we have Andrew Dice Clay as Ginger’s prickly ex-husband, Augie. Full disclosure: I’ve never cared for Clay, particularly back during his foul-mouthed “golden years.” His performance in Blue Jasmine, however, was a complete revelation. Not only was Clay completely invested in the character (this was no Ford Fairlaine, for sure) but he managed to make Augie extremely likable. There was still some of Clay’s blue-collar jerkitude in evidence but Augie is no cardboard-cutout. Similar to the ways that John Travolta and Burt Reynolds had their careers resuscitated via Pulp Fiction and Boogie Nights, I sincerely hope that Clay’s turn in Blue Jasmine ushers in a new era for him. After this, he’s earned my respect enough to check out his next project…providing he doesn’t decide to grace us with Brainsmasher 2, that is.

While I certainly wasn’t surprised that Blue Jasmine (and Allen) were under-represented at this year’s Oscars, I was definitely disappointed. Allen, much like Polanski, is a highly polarizing figure whose personal and professional lives often become a bit too intertwined, at least as far as the general populace goes. Love him or hate him, however, there’s absolutely no one who should deny what an astounding film Blue Jasmine is. If you’ve always been an Allen fan, rest assured that Blue Jasmine is one of his all-time bests. If you’re not an Allen fan, you still owe it to yourself to see the film, especially you’ve ever know anyone who’s struggled with depression or mental illness. Blue Jasmine is many things: funny, sad, infuriating, uplifting. The one thing it’s not, however, is easily ignored.