Celluloid Dreams*
*Apologies to San Francisco Bay Area film critic Tim Sika who uses this same title for his podcasts. However, we’re both out on a limb because this is also the name of a French film production/ distribution/sales company (but, these titles can't be copyrighted; not sure about business names).
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) when they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.
Opening Chatter (no spoilers): When considering what might be enough to pull me back into a theater as the latest COVID variation’s actively on the rise again in my San Francisco Bay Area (yet, nothing was that compelling), then looking at the latest releases on streaming I found myself modifying a line from Jim Croce’s 1972 "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)" to say “There’s nothing here I really wanted to look at,” so I started browsing through old notes of streaming options from earlier this year, reminding me of my negotiated-interest in seeing Woody Allen’s newest, about a former Film Studies professor (hits close to home, I admit) attending a Spanish festival in order to keep a close eye on his publicist-wife who’s showing more-than-needed-interest in a newly-lauded-French-director whom the ex-prof has no respect for as a filmmaker, but in the process he becomes entranced with a local (married) female doctor so they all end up on parallel-infidelity-courses, although his wife’s a bit more carnal. While many in Hollywood and in the general public find it problematic to even consider an Allen film anymore given the sexual assault charges implied (but not prosecuted) about him by his adopted daughter from incidents many years ago, if you’re able to suspend judgment on Allen’s personal life long enough to watch this film I think you’ll find it overall humorously-enjoyable (especially due to the insertion of mini-parodies of famous films by Orson Welles and a cluster of renowned mid-20th-century Europeans) or you might want to just avoid anything to do with Woody—your choice. This film was made 2 years ago, released in many countries around the world but available on streaming (several platforms, cheap rental fee) in the U.S. just since last February. Also, here are links for the schedule of cable network Turner Classic Movies, which gives you a wide selection of older films with no commercial interruptions, and the JustWatch site which offers you a wide selection of options for streaming rental or purchase. If you want to see what reigned at the domestic (U.S.-Canada) box-office last weekend, you'll just go here.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate
that same button or use the “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: Mort Rifkin (Wallace Shawn) is a NYC film critic, formerly a university Film Studies teacher, now an aspiring novel author (stuck in writer’s block, largely because he wants the result to rival the likes of Dostoevsky), married to film publicist Sue (Gina Gershon), so he goes with her to Spain’s San Sebastián Film Festival (ironically, this film debuted at that actual 2020 event) but mostly to keep an eye on her because he’s aware of her fascination with Philippe (Louis Garrel), a French director whose anti-war film’s being celebrated even as Mort finds little value in it (or almost anything else that doesn’t come from the European Modernist directors of the 1960s-‘70s). At the festival Mort’s concerns over the stability of his marriage (to a noticeably younger woman, so think what you will about director Allen’s real-life-situations) seem to have constant validation due to the time Sue spends officially/personally with Philippe, leading to Mort having dreams that are parodies of famous films he admires (me too; they're fabulous), inserting himself and other people from his actual life into Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), A Man and a Woman (Claude Lelouch, 1966), Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960), Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962), Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966), The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962), 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963). As Mort becomes more concerned about what he’s sensing of a connection between Sue and Philippe he develops mild chest pains so he visits local doctor Joanna Rojas (Elena Anaya), to whom he has an immediate attraction even though she’s married to a jerk of an artist, Paco (Sergi López), but she seems to need to stay with her husband out of concern for helping him through his physical/ emotional traumas, though Mort keeps coming up with his “medical” excuses to continue visiting her.
Likewise, Sue comes up with needs to spend most of her days/nights with Philippe so Mort goes on excursions to the local region with Joanna, even as her building-interest in him keeps her at a level of reserve which Mort would be happy to overcome if he could. On their tour of the surrounding countryside, though, they get a flat tire, forcing them to walk to Joanna’s home where she finds her husband having sex with one of his models. After the spouses have a bitter fight, Joanna takes Mort back to his hotel (with no intentions of future connection between them) where Sue announces she’s leaving him to be with Philippe. ⇒As this all comes to closure, Mort has another dream, this time from The Seventh Seal (Bergman, 1957) in which he’s playing chess with Death (Christoph Waltz), who’s actually very kind with him, telling Mort his time has not come yet but he can better enjoy his remaining years with some exercise and avoidance of processed foods. Back in NYC, where this all began so it’s been told to us in flashback, Mort’s still with his therapist, considering going back to teaching with a more tolerant attitude about everything, asking advice on what he should do next.⇐
So What? Obviously, the elephant in the room regarding Woody Allen is the 1992 accusation from adopted-daughter Dylan Farrow about sexual assault when she was a young child, a situation he completely denies, one which never led to charges or prosecution so I have nothing to say about it as all I know is what I read, which is quite contradictory, unresolved. However, here’s a brief statement from Wallace Shawn and Gina Gershon (6:56) about why they chose to work with Allen on this film, essentially seeing him as innocent of what he’s been accused of. Such a situation always brings up legitimate debates about censoring/banning/ignoring various works of art due to the personal lives—if not the actual products—of the artist, with rejections by some of filmmakers such as D.W. Griffith due to the horrid racism in The Birth of a Nation (1915), Leni Riefenstahl due to glorification of the Nazis in Triumph of the Will (1935), or Roman Polanski, not for his films but for his private life including the rape of a teenager in 1977, followed by fleeing the U.S.A. to avoid likely imprisonment, then deportation. Certainly the content of the films noted just above is abhorrent, notwithstanding the technical mastery they provided in moving the medium qualitatively forward, just as Polanski and Allen have had many cinematic triumphs earning Oscars for each of them (to go with many previous nominations/wins) even after their controversies were made public (Polanski won Best Director for The Pianist [2002], Allen Best Original Screenplay for Midnight in Paris [2011]).
It’s not easy separating art from the artist, but I try to do that where I feel the work merits my attention, although with Griffith and Riefenstahl I'm able to at least focus on other cinematic-accomplishments of theirs that don’t carry the putrid-stains of their more controversial works (respectively, Intolerance [1916], Olympia [1938]) whereas Polanski should at least be given some positive attention for Knife in the Water (1962), Rosemary’s Baby (1968 [starring, of course, Mia Farrow]), Chinatown (1974; Oscar for Robert Towne’s Original Screenplay), and Venus in Fur (2013; review in our July 18, 2014 posting), while Allen has many worthy films to see including Annie Hall (1977; won the Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Actress [Diane Keaton], Original Screenplay), Manhattan (1979 [although this content including an affair between a teenager and a much-older-man probably doesn’t play as well now given the accusations Allen’s faced since then]), Stardust Memories (1980), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Blue Jasmine (2013)—although I’ll admit many of his 21st-century endeavors have been considerably weaker than his celebrated late-20th-century work (Amazon Studios was not accepting of how those sexual-abuse-allegations haven’t been put to rest, as this film would have been part of a 5-picture-deal with them, so, after being dropped by Amazon, Allen had to find other production/distribution partners, one easy reason why this latest from him hasn’t been getting much exposure, a bit of a shame because Rifkin’s Festival is one of his best in recent years in my opinion).
I think I’ve seen Allen's previous 49 directed-features so I wanted to even up the tally with #50 (as I emulate Rifkin a bit by only giving that much attention to previous tallies of Bergman and Fellini whereas there are still notable American movies of John Ford, Howard Hawks, William Wyler, etc. I’ve yet to see, with probably my best attention in this realm to Alfred Hitchcock). Further, I couldn’t pass up a story about a pompous professor of Film Studies (I nervously hoped to not see myself too much, although I do have more open tastes toward entertainment vehicles [especially many by George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and some starring stalwarts of the superhero franchises] than Rifkin, even as I share his fascination with the great European masters of the later-20th-century), yet I’m glad I have nothing in common with his marriage difficulties nor do I yearn for/dream about alternative female companions, remembered or fictional, so overall I’m relieved to not be too much like the worst aspects of Mort (although I have lived much of my life dressed as he does in jeans and a denim shirt). At times Rifkin seems to be a shorter, chunkier version of the blowhard NYU film prof who was annoying Allen’s character, Alvie Singer, in Annie Hall before making some statements about famed media theorist Marshall McLuhan until Alive pulled McLuhan out from behind a poster to totally debunk the guy (as a big McLuhan fan—as well as someone who’s attended way too many academic conferences focused on panels led by pompous film professors—I much appreciated that).
Mort realizes his shortcomings, understands he could make positive changes, wants his final years to be more fulfilling, so I think you could empathize with him somewhat, even if he’s annoying at times. Another aspect of Rifkin’s Festival (a clever title, referring both to the event he’s attending with Sue—though for a guy who loves film so much it’s interesting he doesn’t attend hardly any of the screenings—and the collage of dream-parodies of famous films we’re treated to) I particularly enjoyed were those dream-intrusions based on all those old masters, as I’m quite familiar with what's referenced here so I get the jokes, maybe better than viewers who may only see the oddity of these short bits, a reversal of my take on Nicholas Cage parodying himself in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (Tom Gormican; review in our April 28, 2022 posting) where I generally got the humor in how so many prior-Cage-movies were referenced but couldn’t fully appreciate it because I hadn’t seen some of what was being noted or because it’s been too long so the memories weren’t all that fresh. With Rifkin’s Festival I can see exactly what Allen's doing, making those parody-vignettes all the more delightful for me, just as I hope they’d be for anyone also aware of this source material.
Bottom Line Final Comments: Yet, there are plenty who have gone on record in the OCCU, far from my 3½ stars, as having little interest in Rifkin’s Festival with the snobs at Rotten Tomatoes giving it only 41% positive reviews while the usually-restrained-voices at Metacrtic are surprisingly a bit higher for a change but only with a 44% average score (more details on both of these critics’-accumulation-sites farther below in the Related Links section of this posting). A quick skim of critics whom I respect without always agreeing (yet, I now know so few of those in the RT group) and follow on a semi-regular basis yields comments from those disinterested in Allen’s latest perspective on the world as he chooses to see it (with Rifkin somewhat standing in for Allen or at least easily-recognizable-cinematic-versions of Allen’s on-screen-avatars): James Berardinelli of ReelViews says: “Putting aside his well-documented off-screen issues, Allen’s recent output raises the question of whether the creative well has run dry. He has had similar spells before, but this one is different. Allen almost seems to be going through the motions – his jokes are flat, his stories are poorly focused, and the sense of zany energy that characterized his best films is absent.”; Mick LaSalle of my local San Francisco Chronicle says: “Allen also appears to have forgotten how to write dialogue, and he seems entirely lost in directing Shawn, who keeps shouting what should be normal spoken dialogue. [¶] Again, none of this is unpleasant to watch. It’s just absolutely bizarre.”; and Guy Lodge of Variety says: “[…] on the spectrum of late Woody Allen clunkers, it registers on the mild, instantly-evaporating end of the scale, unlikely to change the positions of any loyalists, detractors, ex-fans or distributors with regard to the controversy-tailed filmmaker. Those who still turn up will be met with a blend of exhaust fumes from past Allens (and not even major ones, with “Celebrity” and “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” surfacing amid the recycled material), and a couple of sly one-liners in search of a peak-era script. These are the expectations now, and for better or worse, they are met.”
Faint praise indeed, but least some of these seemingly-learned-souls somewhat agree with me (although in a backhanded-manner), including Jordan Mintzer of The Hollywood Reporter who says: “[…] the overall tone of Rifkin’s Festival is bleak indeed — except, that is, for its constant praise of all the great movies gone by. Mort is a failed writer who once had a much better career as a film teacher, and one can’t help but think this is meant to be a form of self-flagellation on Allen’s part, wallowing in the reality that he’ll never be as brilliant as his idols Bergman or Fellini. […] It’s as if Woody Allen has gotten to the point where he keeps on making movies while knowing full well they’ll never be the ones he loves.” OK, not that much better, yet it's still somewhat approaching positive.
Despite what all these domestic critics have to say, though, their corresponding audiences got no look at Allen’s latest offering until it was released in some theaters on January 18, 2022 (I guess, as the publicity info says it was, although I can find no North American box-office-results for Rifkin’s Festival, whereas worldwide it’s brought in $1.74 million since a December 10, 2020 release in the Netherlands, followed by venues throughout Europe, also in Colombia and Russia) but mostly on streaming since then where you can rent it for $4.99-$6.99 on platforms such as Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video (as always, see JustWatch for options). Well, that’s enough chatter about a just-about-better-than-mediocre-film (from a guy who, despite his personal problems, has earned a place in the pantheon of contemporary filmmakers even as his output's declined overall recently) so I’ll finish out with my usual device of a Musical Metaphor, which in this case seems appropriate to be the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream” (a big hit in 1958, on their 1959 The Everly Brothers Best album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mbYg3s5U5A (from the Ed Sullivan Show of April 27, 1958) because both Mort and Sue, in their individual ways, have designs on others as they might lament: “When I feel blue in the night / And I need you to hold me tight / Whenever I want you, all I have to do is / Dream […] Only trouble is, gee whiz / I’m dreamin’ my life away.” At least the actual dreams of Mort’s are hilarious, although those implied about Philippe and Joanna are hotter.
However, Mort has some sense of regaining a self-awareness of when he became more open to new considerations (not just unlikely romantic partners), so, as I’m going a little shorter than I have been in previous postings this week (an ongoing attempt to not wear myself out at the keyboard for numerous nights each time), I’ll give you another Metaphor based just on Mort’s later goal to try to be more humble, Dylan’s "My Back Pages" (from his 1964 album Another Side of Bob Dylan; lyrics below the YouTube screen if you want to sing along) where he laments his earlier dogmatic stances against the Establishment: “In a soldier’s stance, I aimed my hand / At the mongrel dogs who teach / Fearing not that I’d become my enemy / In the instant that I preach / My pathway led by confusion boat / Mutiny from stern to bow / Ah, but I so much older then / I’m younger than that now.” Mort’s not literally young (along with actor Shawn, who'll be 79 this November 12, as I’ll be just a bit behind him in turning 75 this coming December) when he somewhat stands in for director Allen (who’ll hit 87 in Nov.), but he realizes he’s been too dogmatic in his attitudes, could enjoy life better in his years remaining if he’d loosen up a bit; not bad advice as none of us ever know what day will be our last, what we’d like to remember fondly rather than what we regret about the choices once available to us.
SHORT TAKES
Other Cinema-Related Stuff: (1) In reference (and a bit of clarification) to my last posting, here's how a visual effects team made a younger version of Nicholas Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent; (2) Thoughts on Netflix's massive loss of subscribers.
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts.* Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage. If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!
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Here’s more information about Rifkin’s Festival:
https://www.themediaprostudio.com/en/film/rifkins-festival/ (click the 3 little bars in the upper left for more information)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxNc8ECaerQ (28:33 interview with actors Gina Gershon, Elena Anaya, Wallace Shawn, producer Jaume Roures, and director Woody Allen)
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rifkins_festival
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/rifkins-festival
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If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work. (But if you truly have too much time on your hands you might want to explore some even-longer-and-more-obtuse-than-my-film-reviews-academic-articles about various cinematic topics at my website, https://kenburke.academia.edu, which could really give you something to talk to me about.)
If we did talk, though, you’d easily see how my early-70s-age informs my references, Musical Metaphors, etc. in these reviews because I’m clearly a guy of the later 20th century, not so much the contemporary world. I’ve come to accept my ongoing situation, though, realizing we all (if fate allows) keep getting older, we just have to embrace it, as Joni Mitchell did so well in "The Circle Game," offering sage advice even when she was quite young herself.
By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check-out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile (quite an eternal while, in fact, but maybe while there you’ll get a chance to meet Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey, RIP). Ken
P.S. Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker (although, as you know, with bar songs there are plenty about people broken down by various tragic circumstances, with maybe the best of the bunch—calls itself “perfect”—being "You Never Even Called Me By My Name" written by Steve Goodman, sung by David Allen Coe). But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion/lover/
wife, Nina Kindblad, so here’s our favorite shared song—Neil Young’s "Harvest Moon"—from the performance we saw at the Desert Trip concerts in Indio, CA on October 15, 2016 (as a full moon was rising over the stadium) because “I’m still in love with you,” my dearest, a never-changing-reality even as the moon waxes/wanes over the months/years to come. But, just as we can raunchy at times (in private of course) Neil and his backing band, Promise of the Real, on that same night also did a lengthy, fantastic version of "Cowgirl in the Sand" (19:06) which I’d also like to commit to this blog’s always-ending-tunes; I never get tired of listening to it, then and now (one of my idle dreams is to play guitar even half this well). But, while I’m at it, I’ll also include another of my top favorites, from the night before at Desert Trip, the Rolling Stones’ "Gimme Shelter" (Wow!), a song “just a shot away” in my memory (along with my memory of their great drummer, Charlie Watts, RIP). To finish this cluster of all-time-great-songs I’d like to have played at my wake (as far away from now as possible) here’s one Dylan didn’t play at Desert Trip but it’s great, much beloved by me and Nina: "Visions of Johanna."
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