It's funny, last night I was sulking because Topkapi is 'just entertainment'and tonight I got in from the gym exhausted and only wanted entertainment. LoveFilm again came up trumps with Bananas. It's also funny because it arrived on the back of me seeing Allen's latest Vicky Cristina Barcelona twice (first, second) in the last few days and falling under his spell again for the first time in- I don't know- fifteen? twenty years? If you want a final piece of neat coincidence, it arrives right between the release of the two parts of Soderbergh's Che, which covers very similar material- though with somewhat greater resonance. The last time I watched a film with this much synchronicity (The Girl on a Motorcycle) it stank my DVD player out. Tonight's predestined movie fared altogether better. I laughed my lungs up at times and was never less than entertained throughout the whole eighty-odd minutes.
I do tend to like short films, you know. I've spoken before about my admiration for economy and brutal editing and this film is a great example of that. The sheer number and variety of gags employed is staggering. At this point in his career, Allen was still very much in the thrall of the Marx Brothers- this film could be a homage to Duck Soup- and any serious points made here about the corrupting effect of power are purely incidental to the story. I've always considered that Woody Allen's career followed the path from making madcap laugh-out loud comedies to cerebral wry smile comedies to bored expression films about dysfunctional people in dysfunctional relationships doing dysfunctional things- a bit simplistic maybe, but not too misleading. Here he's at his zany best. The storyline involves a sexually inept, bookish and neurotic Jewish New Yorker rebounding from a failed relationship (Allen, obviously) winding up leading a revolution in the South American republic of San Marcos and being named President there. So far, so dumb. This set-up allows Allen's imagination free-reign as we see sports reporter Howard Cosell commentating live on a Presidential assassination, Woody testing 'the Execusiser' a desk-based gym for people too busy to exercise, an incognito J. Edgar Hoover, a dream sequence involving a crucified Woody being reverse-parked by Nuns, a Battleship Potemkin skit, an advert where a Priest pushes New Testament cigarettes, the CIA sending US troops to fight on both sides of a revolution because they are afraid of being on the wrong side, Woody learning to be a guerrilla and pulling the pin from a grenade and throwing it (the pin!), Woody in the world's least convincing Castro beard. The characters involved, 2-D though they are, are hilarious- the charming despot, madcap revolutionary, paranoid FBI men, cause-of-the-month protester- they all provide great colour.
The range of humour, as I said, is important to the movie- it could have been a tedious series of prat-falls or of witty exchanges that grate. It is nicely balanced. My favourite gag of all was when Woody, trying to impress the activist Nancy says "for me the greatest crimes are the crimes against human dignity" and then falling down a manhole. Or the typically Woody exchange: "how am I immature?" "emotionally, sexually and intellectually" "yeah but in what other ways?". Even the music is great.
I think I'm rambling incoherently. I only make these notes so that I can look back and remember how I felt and this gibberish won't help at all. Suffice to say I really enjoyed it- 8/10.
