minor Allen work

Rating: Null/10 (5 July 2000)

Minor Woody Allen is better than no Woody Allen, I suppose, but `Sweet and Lowdown' raises the question of whether being as prolific as Allen has been in his moviemaking career has actually begun to diminish him as an artist. Is it better to be a Stanley Kubrick or a Terrance Malick, producing films sparingly and with long intervals between them, or someone like Allen who, for the most part, releases a film every six to twelve months, almost without giving the previous film time to vacate the theater? Is it indeed possible for a creative genius to eventually run dry in his inspiration and thereby suffer from the law of diminishing returns? For fans of the more dilatory directors, the wait between works may be grueling and aggravating but, at least, those devotees don't end up taking the artists for granted. In Allen's case, one fears that, when his career is done and his entire body of work evaluated, it will seem to be a plain - an elevated one it is true - but one whose peaks and monuments stand few and far between.
Strike one against `Sweet and Lowdown' is the fact that Allen himself does not appear as a character in the story (he does, however, make a few brief appearances in interview form). Something happens when Allen pulls himself out of the center of his films; they cease to be true Woody Allen movies and become strangely ordinary. Endearing and charming as Sean Penn is in the lead role, the absence of Allen also means the absence of the dry, acerbic wit that makes the best Allen films so much fun. Allen has always been better as a writer of first-person rather than third-person comedy. Somehow, the films in which he stays strictly behind the scenes lack the comedic passion and sharp-edged wit of those works in which he is up front and center stage. This same problem occurred, for example, in `The Purple Rose of Cairo.' Allen simply doesn't reach the comic heights he invariably achieves when he is writing for himself.
Penn stars as the fictional character Emmet Ray, the second greatest jazz guitarist during the 1930's, a sweet-natured but lost soul who suffers from kleptomania, runs a second-rate prostitution ring, brags incessantly about his greatness - yet panics when confronted with the prospect of meeting the world's first greatest guitarist - and thinks watching passing trains and shooting rats at the local dump are the height of entertainment. He also suffers from a deep-seated terror of emotional commitment, throwing up when his ever-loving mute girlfriend informs him she loves him, then flees in panic, breaking her heart and living on in everlasting regret for the foolish mistake he has made, letting the one true love of his life get away. All this makes for mildly amusing entertainment, but Allen's film often seems muted itself in its comic temperament. Penn provides a stellar and delightful interpretation of this well-meaning but confused genius, yet the scenes themselves rarely make us laugh. Having Ray's love interest be a charming but mute young woman may be clever and cute in its conception, but it leads to coyness and archness rather than depth and revelation. We are, ultimately, left with whimsy rather than big laughs, sentimentality rather than character development. All the people we are involved with seem merely to be acting out parts, not truly interacting in a way that is meaningful. Particularly annoying is the continual intercutting of musical `experts' commenting on Ray in pseudo-interview style, mouthing statements that, politely put, are simply too cute by half.
I hasten to add that, visually, the film is a knockout. The set designers miraculously transport us back to a glorious time of elegance and style, recreating, among other things, the haunting beauty of a stroll down a beach boardwalk in the 1920's and 30's. There is a spareness and simplicity to the art direction and set decoration that works more effectively than the crass visual overstatement that afflicts so many big budget period pieces.

Yet, for all its virtues, `Sweet and Lowdown' somehow falls flat, leaving the audience bemused but strangely unexhilarated. Perhaps, Allen does best when he injects his own unique brand of clear-eyed cynicism into the world of heartbreaking romance (just the combination that made `Annie Hall' such a timeless masterpiece). Here there is simply too much `sweet' and not enough `lowdown.'