Greek as drama can be

Rating: 10/10 (19 February 2006)

It wasn't that easy for me the other night, to go out and see a Woody Allen movie in the local art film theater after a hard day work. I'd rather sit down, have a beer and a smoke and think about how i can go on these days to trust anybody until this confidence is going to be embarrassed. You can figure out by this, that I am not especially fond of Allen's oeuvre. But from the opening shot on I was seized! Calm eloquence, daring but subtle profoundness, a balanced camera POV, the perfect set up. This was going to bee ancient Greek drama. And indeed it was! No spoof! Any judgment on good or bad would be superficial. This movie is beyond. With all its conceitedness. The cast, the story, the camera; it all fits together as if Moving Pictures were reinvented like it was with Grapes of Wrath, Citizen Kane, Spartacus, Apocalypse Now, 2001 Space Odyssee, A Bout de Soufflé... and other key notes in cinema history. You can criticize on details, on taste, but in the end that doesn't matter at all, because the movie is aleatoric multi-layered with metaphors. This time, for me on long- term, as a monument for the disintegration of our culture, but also as a sign of the decline of movie pictures. These are the things you "cannot do on stage anymore" (as the late Frank Zappa would have said). As I said: perfect Greek drama, and I pity next generations who will relate cinema only as this odd dark theater-like building where they show pictures with "lensebundled light-rays through celluloid". A straight 10!