Proof (once again) that no one should take Woody Allen too seriously, as he doesn't himself...

Rating: 8/10 (25 August 2016)

... and that's the mark of geniuses.
Now seriously, how come I never heard about Emmett Ray? I might not be a 'jazz aficionado', not 'Woody Allen' level anyway, but I humbly believe I would be aware of the existence of the second best guitar-player in the world after Django Reinhart (the film's running-gag). But then again, I gave "Sweet and Lowdown", Allen's half-drama half-documentary musical biopic, the benefit of the doubt, after all, if I was familiar with Django yet incapable to tell you the name of one of his titles, it was all the more plausible not to be familiar with the second best.
So, I started the film and I was immediately hooked by Emmett, the character, here's a guy whose eccentricity is displayed before his talent. He's played by Sean Penn using his whiny worn-out voice of the guy who doesn't try to disguise his lack of huskiness, he's got the most original haircut, the most stylish suit, he's a womanizer, even a bit of pimp, and while everyone's waiting for his performance, he's playing pool, having a few drinks and talk with one of his protegees. Call it the 'Amadeus' syndrome but his eccentricity is so flashily displayed that there's no way to believe this guy isn't talented. So he meets the public and starts playing and although I'm no expert, I thought I slightly recognized the first theme he played, which seems to have been borrowed from a very popular French ballad.
That should have given me a hint, but no, as the plot advanced, no matter how weird things got, I didn't see it coming, Emmett was too original not to be real. So I believed the story about the moon, I believed that he met a mute girl and lived perhaps his longest and sweetest romance before getting back to his old habits and dumping her. I believed the love story with the wannabe writer, the marriage, the adultery with a bodyguard and it's not until the final act, that I had enough of bizarreness, I had to check. Because I have a bad habit, before watching a biopic, I like to check the basic details, you know birth year, death, the 'how' and 'why' etc.
I wanted to pause the movie and see when Emmett Ray died, was it in the 30's so I might expect some depression, suicide or assassination or what? So, I google his name and found out he was a fictional character, I couldn't believe it. I didn't even suspect that after "Zelig", Woody Allen would strike again in a jazz-related documentary. I swallowed everything, I mean you have Woody Allen talking passionately about his kind of music and many jazz experts debating on the veracity of some details, and come on, the second best guitar player after Django. It's all fake but I guess I'm too stubborn to accept it..
Woody Allen makes a "Spinal Tap" like film, and while the jazz player doesn't exist, jazz does, the Great Depression did, these kinds of people too, and these fans of jazz, you better believe they're tangible. So why not exploring the heritage of jazz and reinvent a world that would feel like a kaleidoscope of the environment that made a music like jazz the only possible enjoyable one. By choosing a fictional character, Allen allowed him to be grander and more original and appealing more than any real jazz-man. Emmett Ray knows how to get women but not to keep them, he has no social skills, no sense of commitment or of money but his talent is all he's got and when he doesn't play his guitar, he's regressing. This is how music is important to him. It's all about the music.
And it's also very fitting that the girl he loved was mute but not deaf, she has an access to his talent, she knows what she loves in him and she allows him to be natural but she can't step on his territory, he has a freedom of total expression, and leaves her when his heart is being progressively tamed. He's an artist, so wrapped up in his conviction to be an artist that he can't afford to live a normal life. It's like the musician inspiring Allen and Allen inspiring the musician, a sort of Jekyll and Hyde duality. And both Sean Penn and Samantha Morton are excellent in their respective performances showcasing the natural harmony between the zany yin of a lunatic doofus and the quiet and benevolent yang of a patient understanding women. We love Emmett through Hattie and despite Emmett. And because such a sweet gal like Hattie loved him, we give him the benefit of the doubt.
The second relationship should have told me something wasn't right, Uma Thurman played Blanche, the writer whose goal is to write about men with fascinating occupations, and she's so different from Hattie that Emmett keeps her like an obvious trophy-wife and if there's ever one thing Emmett cherishes more than his guitar, it's his ego, so it's all come naturally until she finally cheats on him looking for a wilder escapism with one of Emeett's boss bodyguards. I guess Allen went overboard at the end so that the only idiots who didn't know it was fictional could finally realize they were played with but this part had the merit to have a funny punch-line, one that couldn't do without a cameo of Django Reinhart.
Emmett then vanishes after a few hit records, and there's nothing left about him, but who knows maybe there were many Emmett-likes who wanted to be the next Django, we can't be sure that such a larger-than-life never existed and Woody Allen's false tribute to a fictional jazz player becomes the magnificent tribute of a real art.