I can make my guitar sound like rain...

Rating: 7/10 (6 April 2016)

The old cliché of a person being great artist but a terrible human being is certainly true for Sean Penn's fictional Emmet Ray, self-dubbed the second best guitarist in the world. Why he attracts the attention of more than one female is beyond me; Thurman's Blanche is drawn to that rough, unhemmed quality about him like writers are drawn to trouble subjects because they make for great stories. And Allen too has made this little misstep - there is nigh a thing redeemable about Ray but for his soulful jazz guitar, which must be exactly what Allen finds himself so eager to capture. The framing device is an unnecessary one, too clever for its own right; Allen and other jazz alumni are filmed as talking heads recounting the great life of Emmet Ray with a wistfulness for his mastery...there is a subjectivity quality to their stories of course, but this seems like an artificial method of further mystifying the great enigma that was Ray.
A pity then that Allen's script is as relatively straightforward as it is. He did not often delve as dark and deep as Interiors did, and here even the most emotionally dramatic scenes are smothered by the incessant cheery jazz as the backing track to Ray's life. No woman would ever be secondary to his music, and it rings so true. Not even such an innocent, demure maiden like Hattie, as Samantha Morton in one of the performances of her time. She winds back the clock to the times of pantomime and silent film, and in each wide, uncontrollably smile, and each smothered tear, has brought us such a defined and memorable character without saying a word. Allen almost never has to bring the camera closer; her body language works furiously in place of her mouth, whether it is enthusiastically replacing a flat tire for the prize of hearing one more tune from Ray, or the way her adorable chews indicate her satisfaction, and in perhaps the best scene of the film, the way she wordlessly convinces Ray to let her accompany him on his trip. Her eyes water, and her entire face crumples up, and Penn rambles and rambles...and relents, even his emotional defense broken down.
In a similar scene he does the same thing and humorously forbids Hattie from giving him a birthday present, before eagerly allowing it once he sees that it is something he desires. This is one of his many vices of course - a sort of contradictive possessiveness and consumerist hunger for objects that don't contribute to his music at all, but which he wants nevertheless. His ego has convinced him that he wants these things, and that no woman would ever want to leave him, and that his musical performance is beyond reproach. Allen, naturally, adds a comic layer to this furiousness and decadence - see how Penn dangles from the model moon and awkwardly untangle himself and let the music come to his fingers. And then a smash cut to later where he is literally smashing and burning the offender. How dare it intrude on his performance. But most of all the character is destructive, and Allen has somewhat obscured this fact. Django Reinhardt emerges as this huge, imposing figure within the film, dogging each of Ray's steps, even as he is never physically seen. How would Django react to seeing the great Emmet Ray? Surely he would not faint. Would he even recognise him? As Allen's faux-documentary style intends, perhaps not.