It’s no secret that the standards of Woody Allen’s work declined dramatically after exiting his mid-cinematic masterpieces like Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Stardust Memories. For every outstanding Zelig, there was an underwhelming Purple Rose of Cairo plus a Shadow and Fog. Husbands and Wives was followed by Alice and the trend only grew worse with time. There was a need to suffer from herculean works like Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending, and Whatever Works to enjoy the masterpiece, Blue Jasmine.
It seems like forever since I saw Vicky Cristina Barcelona and even longer since I formed a personal opinion about the film. The film is stronger than I initially assumed, but still lacks in certain departments, making the stellar parts less valuable. There is a distinct lack of coherence throughout, and yet it manages to keep almost all viewers engaged. In my opinion, it is undoubtedly one of his most energetic, fluid, and lackadaisical films. At the same time, the film acts as an eye candy for Scarlett Johansson admirers hailing from a time when portraying a real character wasn’t synonymous with losing one’s identity to marketing.
Following the highly acclaimed Blue Jasmine, VCB is Allen’s second-best work in the later phase of his career. (I know this might be outrageous but for me, Café Society takes the crown).
Allen was so assured of his skill as a filmmaker at this point that he could just sit back and relax, confident that he would find an interesting and skillful way to communicate his thoughts. Even during the peak of his abilities, he was incapable of making a film this complex, which is why his mid-career accomplishments feel so suffocatingly stagnant in comparison. In his defense, however, Vicky Cristina and Blue Jasmine simply do not stand the test of time as their other works do.
Allen utilizes a more novelistic, or perhaps more aptly short storian, style with the film. This is similar to his approach with Manhattan and Café Society. But for Vicky Cristina, he was so confident in his abilities that he could just let go of the reins and improvise, certain it wouldn’t come crashing down during the editing process. He was able to merge the concepts of literature and cinema and make them coexist without feeling forced.
The dabs and strokes and feints of the opening, where he sets the action in motion by making a series of suggestions snatches of dialogue, telling images, and powerful sounds, avoids traditional linearity because he knows that films always move forward, so a story will arise so it does not matter what is spectacular yet completely accurate and without exaggeration.
As we watch the film, it appears to us that Allen conceptually plays with these ideas and the cinematic dimension knows there is a literary part that exceeds just laying the groundwork for scenes that are purely about images, movements, sounds, dissolves, and cuts. At times just highlighting an element or at times mixing and matching the emphases. The point, I suspect, is to prevent any single character from emerging as the center of attention and instead direct it towards the dynamic interrelationships among the characters and the uncertainty of transient feelings captured in fleeting seconds.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona is what Sweet and Lowdown should have been, but Allen hadn’t released himself from mid-period technique enough to accomplish that. This is an example of a staggering mistake one which is frequent to start looking for the best of Allen’s works and attribute them to his cinematographer of the period, so to speak, here Javier, whose images are without a doubt breathtaking, and captivating in a repressive fashion, not at all romantic which is to say, appropriate. Instead of following the simple path, VCB does place, where the location, the geographic, cultural, and psychologic together form the center of the romance and the cinematography and montage transform into non-standalone manifestations of it. No further emphasis is needed to say.
Yet these combined results stem from painstaking efforts by Allen and Aguirresarobe and not because Allen decided that he could give his cinematographer autonomy.
Indeed, his experience includes working with greats like Willis, DiPalma, Nykvist, and unfortunately, Storaro. One would have to be completely blind to not see that, regardless of the strength of the cinematographer’s style or the size of his personality, it is always the case that Allen, for one, has been able to subordinate it to his material and that irrespective of who directs photography in his films.
The blend of skill and talent in the script is so rich that it is not greatly hindered by the acting. Javier Bardem stands out the most. While I have never liked him as an actor, I have to confess that Allen gives him a lot of space to play with his character and Bardem makes the most of all of it. Rebecca Hall’s irritating criticism and her resemblance to a Modigliani painting can be rather vexatious, but they are not a disqualifying factor, in fact, they help the film’s resolution. Penelope Cruz strikes me as slightly over-directed. At times, she comes fairly close to capturing her character, but more often than not she seems to be lost in the role. Of course, Johansson is more a figure than an actress: a walking textbook of self-conscience bearing so many knowing looks that one wonders how she manages to get through a scene without setting the other actors on fire, without ever helping to raise the average performance of the cast.
The VCB films cross above the boundaries of human nature, and relationships. The realm that Allen dominantly and accurately captures with little to no sentiment. One thing is certain, he definitely does not receive nearly the amount of credit he deserves for being the first American director to ever showcase sex on screen realistically and inappropriately.
We hardly comprehend how remarkable his portrayals of intimate relations are because they are so effortless, especially when considering the more than a century’s worth of awkward, submerged, giddy, and grotesque counterexamples.
This film really could have thrived without a linear narrative because of the emotion and it is messy and jarring at times. Additionally, Allen figures out a way to facilitate some preposterous non-linear type of closure by bombarding the audience with some minor arm fire but he has always been terrible at gunplay. The dispatching of Johansson in Match Point will forever remain one of the most utterly ridiculous and absurdly implausible murder scenes in the history of film. Here, Cruz’s shooting in the general vicinity of Bardem and Hall is a huge self-indulgent diversion, a device so egregiously blatant that it must be singled out because so much of what comes before it is surprisingly good. Partly, Allen’s closing of Hall who, once more, subtly but quite convincingly looks like a different person is a changed person magnificently alters the overall impact of the film.
I can’t stand lazy, unimaginative critics who seem to copy and paste their reviews, only swapping out some nouns, and as if every film is like every other one, reviewing them is a robotic form of a Mad Libs game. With that said, there is not much more to say about Amazon’s take on newer releases which is at best passible, and at times, extraordinary. It lies somewhere in the middle concerning Aguirresarobe’s work. To do so requires a 4K transfer, which as an Allen film it will never have, and since there is no justice in this world, I do not expect to breathe again.
Almost every one of the frames has some warmth in it. They are soft and subtle muted tones which make it pleasing, but digital’s soft focus look is yet to be achieved. On the other hand, the over-the-top soft focus tracking shot of massive sparklers going off in front of a church, the type of thing streaming services consistently bungled just a couple of years ago, is surprisingly clean and solid.
The phrase a Woody Allen movie for people who do not like Woody Allen movies has always made me cringe for a lot of reasons, foremost of them being that the two films often mentioned with it, Midnight in Paris and Match Point, are his worst films.
I think it can be used effectively, though, in reference to Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which certainly does stand on its own. However, to not have the context of the best of the rest of Allen’s work and how it both syncs up to and departs from all that is to be deprived of one of the richest parts of the experience.
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