For the love of Django

Rating: 10/10 (16 April 2008)

Well, first off I just want to say that this is my all-time favorite Woody Allen movie. And that is saying something since he has made so many wonderful pictures over a few decades now. But this sweet movie, set in the prohibition age of the 30s, shows off Allen's unique ability to combine real comedy with a sort of expose into the ironic aesthetics of the human psyche and the human heart. Allen narrates throughout this picture, casting Sean Penn, who once again proves to be a really fine actor, and is perfectly placed in this semi-biographical piece where he gets to display his character's overblown egocentric eccentricities while also capturing the cheap emotional insecurities of the orphaned artist. As Emmett Ray, the world's 2nd greatest guitar player, he knows he cannot quite come to grips with his life's obsession, specifically; the gypsy guitarist Django Rheinhart, (and as everyone knows, the world's "greatest guitar player"). This obsession fascinatingly becomes for Emmett one of ENVY throughout the film, which IS, in itself, an emotional metaphor that ultimately drives Emmett to outlandish behavior. His maniacal drive to assert himself and to prove to himself, somehow, that he is Rheinhard's equal. . . is a sweetly painful joy to watch. (He cannot get it resolved in his head, he cannot quite imagine that his cheap fly-by-night character is not just as "artistic" as Django's MUST be!). His performance gets beautifully offset by Samantha Morton, who plays an innocent angelic mute-girl who, alone, can contain Emmett's ego long enough to bring him down to earth, and finally allow him to personalize a bit of his real artistic essence. Her ability to project a wonderful range of emotion while never uttering a sound is remarkable in the movie. Their chemistry is amazing throughout, and the sweetness of it becomes endearing. I cannot quite watch this picture, I think, without a big smile etched on my face, which to me makes it an enduring classic. Allen has done something here that he can never quite find throughout all the rest of his films, and that is to create, with masterful sweetness, a certain expose of the human psyche, and how funny and odd it may become to explore it a bit. The music was also quite wonderful, as usual with Woody Allen's classi films . And most of all I love the way this film leaves me feeling happier each and every time I watch it.