Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013)

[Dylan]

Did anyone else feel like Cate Blanchett was channeling Judy Davis in this performance?

It actually didn't occur to me as I was watching the film, but thinking about it now, I can definitely see the similarity, particularly in the scenes with Jasmine on the edge of disgust or wallowing in cynicism (i.e. the scene with Jasmine and her nephews in the diner).

[Randall Maysin]

Also Stockard Channing in Six Degrees of Separation. Some of her vocal inflections when she gets really emotional were basically identical.

[Black Hat]

Blue Jasmine cut pretty deep because I can't get away from putting this film in the context of being made by a 77 year old man who despite what his detractors think of his body of work, it can not be denied that Woody Allen has lived a life rich with experience.

So what is he saying here? I don't think this was about calling out the rich or the criminally rich or any kind of social or political commentary. I think that's a way too simplistic reading of the film. This struck me as the work of a man giving his treatise on life after being a part of humanity and existing in this world for 77 years. Every character in the film was an archetype even the fact that the sisters were adopted and the distance that created felt representative of a much broader statement. Not a single person in the film comes off well or to put it another way healthy of mind, healthy of spirit. In fact I felt Jasmine the most sympathetic because at least she's trying. I've heard people champion the Andrew Dice Clay character as being the 'good guy' but

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I got the distinct impression that he used to beat Ginger and her relationship with the violent Chili was a continuation of a pattern Jasmine repeatedly alludes to. And even if that's not true he certainly is a bitter, broken man.

Blue Jasmine is about how we're all a victim of circumstance and circumstance transcends class. Some people like Ginger accept their fate and move on because the alternative, changing the very core of yourself you have taken your entire life to establish or even not is of course hard but also terrifying when you are the ages of these characters. Meaning not looking at yourself in the mirror or running away from it but breaking that mirror or in the case of Jasmine having it repeatedly broken for you can leave you muttering to yourself on a park bench as the lady next to you squirms herself away. And if you haven't been on that proverbial park bench muttering to yourself as someone nearby squirms away you haven't lived much of a life.

I'm very curious to see how Allen follows this up because I definitely can see the character of Jasmine or a Jasmine like character being explored further. There's a lot more there.

[FerdinandGriffon]

Is there a less generous living filmmaker than Woody Allen? Blue Jasmine is, like all of his other recent work, a film steeped in hate, in uncut misanthropy and pettiness. He's the anti-Renoir, building straw men in order to condemn them with glee. It's hard for me to feel sympathy for puppets, but Allen achieves this with his characters, who he tortures so unfeelingly that they gain a degree of animation, if only from their pain.

Black Hat is right, there is no political or social commentary in this film. The set design rules out all possibility of that. And although it formally most resembles a comedy of manners, Blue Jasmine's grotesques are so unrelentingly tasteless, stupid and rude that manners (and therefore comedy) have no place in their lives. This is just another entry in Allen's tour through Hell on earth. He's visited New York, Barcelona, London, and Rome and found them all the same, infernal by virtue of being populated (as all amateur existentialists know, Hell is other people). Only Paris gets off the hook, because it was all a dream. The rest of the world's cultural capitals are lining up to beg for damnation. Allen probably thinks they'll get what they deserve. I hope he's wrong, but cinema seems to have an endless supply of Fausts.

[Black Hat]

Ferdinand I have to strongly disagree that Blue Jasmine was 'steeped in hate, uncut misanthrophy and pettiness'. I saw the film as being full of compassion for its characters, even more so because on a surface level everyone was unlikeable. I never felt for one instant that Allen was judging any of these people's choices. They were presented to us within reasons of the why rather than the disgust of the how. The film's ending ending specifically speaks to that and I can not see how anyone can respond to it walking out of the theater feeling how you felt.

[FerdinandGriffon]

Blue Jasmine is about how we're all a victim of circumstance and circumstance transcends class. Some people like Ginger accept their fate and move on because the alternative, changing the very core of yourself you have taken your entire life to establish or even not is of course hard but also terrifying when you are the ages of these characters. Meaning not looking at yourself in the mirror or running away from it but breaking that mirror or in the case of Jasmine having it repeatedly broken for you can leave you muttering to yourself on a park bench as the lady next to you squirms herself away. And if you haven't been on that proverbial park bench muttering to yourself as someone nearby squirms away you haven't lived much of a life.

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The film's structure builds towards a series of revelations of just how much Jasmine was responsible for her own fate, of just how aware she was of her husband's dealings and of how she sealed her fate by revealing those dealings, not from any pangs of conscience but from jealousy. There are very clear lines of causality in her trajectory and they don't lead back to much for me beyond that Jasmine was spoiled as a child and has remained a rampant egoist throughout her adult life and all of its crises. I'm not sure what circumstance has to do with it. At the beginning of the film we sympathize with a woman who has had her life turned inside out, but as the film continues and we learn the degree to which she was an agent in her own self destruction and that of those around her I feel that sympathy falls by the wayside. Yes, her sense of identity suffers, but I don't think she is a victim of circumstance.

[Black Hat]

You can be responsible but yet still be a victim of circumstance for we have the ability to make choices but leaving all that aside lets say you are correct about Jasmine, do you still not have compassion for her plight? Is she really any different than her sister? It seems to me that you are coming from a condemning closed place of judgment rather than an open place of understanding which is where compassion resides.

[FerdinandGriffon]

In real life, I think I'd feel a great deal of compassion for her and her sister. The actors are very good in their roles and if I feel any compassion towards the characters while watching the film it's because of them. But Allen's script and direction work in the opposite direction for me.

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The structure of the narrative builds towards a series of revelations about Jasmine that only confirm our suspicions about her: that she's shallow, selfish, and more responsible for her current situation than she's able to admit.

As written, she doesn't say a single thing in the course of the film that doesn't ring false in the viewer's ear. She isn't allowed even a smidgen of self awareness or feeling for the suffering of others. She goes through several traumas that are not her fault, but these are often played for laughs, as a way of humiliating her (for example, her encounters with the dentist, which are presented less as the threatening sexual aggression of a person with power over her than the clownish, cliched wooings of a pathetic and ridiculous troll). Upbeat jazz plays when she's distraught, but fades out when she's enjoying herself. She can't weep without mascara blackening her eyes and sweat staining her armpits, lending her a physical absurdity to match her crazed ramblings. We see a woman robbed of dignity and are told that she has robbed herself of it (though we might look further for a culprit). If I am coming from a closed place of judgement, I feel that's because Allen put me there.

[aox]

In my opinion, this is Allen's best film since the 1980/early90s, but I say that not having seen some of his work in between. One thing: Sarsgaard's character remarks that he used to know people who lived in the Hamptons or grew up there (I can't recall the specific comment). My heart dropped at that moment b/c I assumed WA was going to go for the obvious that Dwight was going to hear through the grapevine who Jasmine really was and learn about her past. I am so thrilled WA didn't take this familiar plot device. As fun as Midnight in Paris was, I found the whole thing rather obvious and nothing a 16 year old intellectual hasn't thought about (think about the Radiohead song The Bends, "I wish it was the 60s, I wish I could be happy..."). I was so pleasantly surprised to see a 77 year old making a challenging film for himself that required him to not chase the obvious.

[Luke M]

Pouring my thoughts out here having just gotten home from seeing this... I felt this was one of the most honest films I've seen of late in regards to dating. I think Jasmine's views on men may come off as shallow to the naive but having been out there in the dating scene I found it refreshingly accurate.

Having seen this and Soderbergh's "Side Effects" I find it funny filmmakers are creating scenarios where Wall Street finance guys go to jail. In the real world, this is as a realistic a possibility as us fighting skyscraper-sized aliens with equally large robots.

Good film, not sure where I'd rank it amongst Allen's ouevre but definitely one of the better films I've seen this year.

[swo17]

I find it funny filmmakers are creating scenarios where Wall Street finance guys go to jail. In the real world, this is as a realistic a possibility as us fighting skyscraper-sized aliens with equally large robots.

People do still go to jail for insider trading though, don't they? Isn't that what happened to Channing Tatum's character in Side Effects?

[Matt]

Baldwin's character is based on Bernie Madoff, no?

[Luke M]

swo17, yes, apparently I may have been mistaken: Since August 2009, federal prosecutors in Manhattan have charged 71 people with insider trading and won 65 convictions. So, it does happen.

Matt, I think Baldwin's character was Madoff-like, but the movie didn't allude to the character having notoriety in the media. The characters seemed to casually talk about Jasmine losing her fortune because they heard it through her sister not because they saw it on the news. It was my interpretation anyway.

[Professor Wagstaff]

Pouring my thoughts out here having just gotten home from seeing this... I felt this was one of the most honest films I've seen of late in regards to dating. I think Jasmine's views on men may come off as shallow to the naive but having been out there in the dating scene I found it refreshingly accurate.

Luke, can you elaborate on this because I'm not quite sure what you mean. The men of the film fascinated me with their desperation and neediness when it came to being wanted and desired. I'm curious to hear more insight into this.

[Black Hat]

Luke, I'd like to second the Professor on that.

As written, she doesn't say a single thing in the course of the film that doesn't ring false in the viewer's ear. She isn't allowed even a smidgen of self awareness or feeling for the suffering of others. We see a woman robbed of dignity and are told that she has robbed herself of it (though we might look further for a culprit).

See for me I saw it as that she was aware, perhaps even hyper aware and that shock, regardless of how much she was to blame (I think this is up for debate) but perhaps influenced by it being forced upon her is what drove her breakdown.

If I am coming from a closed place of judgement, I feel that's because Allen put me there.

This well written piece agrees.

[Luke M]

Pouring my thoughts out here having just gotten home from seeing this... I felt this was one of the most honest films I've seen of late in regards to dating. I think Jasmine's views on men may come off as shallow to the naive but having been out there in the dating scene I found it refreshingly accurate.

Luke, can you elaborate on this because I'm not quite sure what you mean. The men of the film fascinated me with their desperation and neediness when it came to being wanted and desired. I'm curious to hear more insight into this.

Well, specifically I was thinking about Jasmine's need to find a high quality man and even her pushing her sister to dump her "loser" boyfriend, I think those are experiences shared by a number of women. I will admit to having tested the waters in online dating and my experiences were I suppose similar to a Bachelorette show. For anyone that hasn't done online dating, you basically make a profile, send off messages to women you find interesting and hope to hear back. It's a woman's market and one that clearly leans towards favoring the likes of Sarsgaard's character as opposed to say Augie or Chili. I think the film captured that kind of honesty pretty well. However, I think Woody Allen felt maybe a little ashamed of this point of view because of what I felt was the weakest scene, was where Chili flips out and throws the phone. It was sort of like Allen had to justify his belief that women shouldn't choose "losers". Some of them may have fits of anger! I kinda wish he had just stuck to his guns and made it like Chili was this perfect boyfriend but didn't make any money or wasn't interesting enough and that alone should justify Ginger deciding to stray.

Also, despite both women failing in their dating conquests, they both still had all the power. Ginger used it to take Chili back even after he knew she cheated. And while the future is less clear for Jasmine, I think we were left to assume she'll find another well-to-do man soon enough.

[Ibnezra]

I'm enjoying reading these insights and the only meaningful contribution I feel like I can make is simply to point out that there is a great deal of unpredictability in a Woody Allen film. Cynicism reigns supreme, but I prefer the expectation of a cynical outcome and the occasional suprise happy ending in his oeuvre, to the reverse of this, which is typical of mainstream Hollywood film-making. In regards to "Blue Jasmine", the real question remains: What would be more cynical, an ending in which Jasmine's quest to find a new life is frustrated, or one in which she finds a return to her life of prestige and privilage? Would a happy ending for the protagonist be a happy ending for the film's audience?

[Sonmi451]

Well put Ibnezra, I agree. While Allen's premier aim may not have been political (I might take issue with this, but won't), there was clearly a high level of commentary occurring. I remember thinking while watching that he better not give Jasmine the happy ending, for it would nullify and negate any critique that came before.

[ShellOilJunior]

I was half expecting Jasmine to walk off a pier at the end but was glad Woody decided to end it the way he did.

[warren oates]

I can't understand all the praise this film has gotten. Aside from Blanchett's committed performance and a few of the others, the film is distinguished only by not being as bad as the worst other recent Allen works but there's no way it can compare to his best films from the last century. It would be hard to disagree with a lot of the criticisms leveled above, especially by FerdinandGriffon. There's been an almost unrelentling misanthropy running through much of Allen's output in the past decade or so, but it's not leavened by any corresponding heights of humor, insight or artistic achievment. Instead it plays as the existential sour grapes of a cranky old man too set in his ways to see anything with fresh eyes anymore. And it's even sadder to think of it as the work of a man to whom nobody will ever say no (the thinking man's art film George Lucas), who is married to an uncritical first reader who -- unlike, say, Mia Farrow -- either doesn't read his early drafts or has nothing useful to say about them. So much of the storytelling in this film feels slack and sloppy. Through a number of clumsy exposition scenes, we get to know at least twice as many characters as we need to in order to follow the narrative, there's almost zero sense of place in the SF locations and even less in the weirdly incongruous vaguely Italian working class joes like Augie and Chili who seem imported from a cartoon version of a Brooklyn that's several decades out of date. It's also quite pointlessly photographed in widescreen.

Decent as it is relative to some of Allen's other late career stinkers, there's next to no chance I'd ever want to watch this again. Did somebody above say that when Louis C.K. was briefly on screen they wished they were watching his show instead? Amen to that.

[AnamorphicWidescreen]

Enjoyed Blue Jasmine when I saw it last year on Blu - Excellent film. The Woodman still has it. Cate Blanchett was amazing in this - some of the best acting I've ever seen; IMHO this is her best acting outside of the film Little Fish (very underrated, but that's another thread).

Kudos also goes to Sally Hawkins, one of the most underrated actresses out there; also enjoyed her in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky & Vera Drake....

Hadn't seen A. Dice Clay in years, and honestly didn't recognize him at all...at first.

I get the comparison to A Streetcar named Desire, but don't agree with this - ASND was a drama & wasn't at all funny; and, to be honest, I found B. Jasmine quite funny...even the scenes when Jasmine was talking to herself.

I also felt the film presented a kind of poetic justice that I enjoyed seeing....

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You always hear about these big shots that steal, lie, and screw over innocent people for financial gain & get a slap on the wrist, so it's nice to see one of them get what they deserve (for once), even if it's just in a movie...