3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.10.09
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Woody Allen's life and film career certainly have been a long and strange collective journey; at this point, it can become difficult to determine where one leaves off and the other takes over.
Since he has written and/or directed at least one film per year since 1971 — a truly astonishing output — and is best remembered for idiosyncratic and extremely personal works such as Annie Hall
, Hannah and her Sisters
and Deconstructing Harry
, one can't help believing that Allen has employed cinema to exorcise personal demons and struggle toward an understanding of life, the universe and everything.  |
| Even when he's criticizing her, Melody (Evan Rachel Wood) cheerfully hangs onto every word coming from Boris (Larry David), because she believes that anything spoken by a "genius" must be worth embracing. Eventually, a funny thing happens: Rather than diminishing Melody's vibrant, sunny nature, Boris begins to perceive the flaws in his own behavior. |
The delightful surprise, of course, is that so many of these highly personal films have succeeded as mass entertainment.
All of which brings us to Whatever Works, a quirky little comedy-drama that builds to Allen's current solution to the Big Secret: a Chimera he has chased since 1975's Love and Death
. Whereas this pursuit and its possible answers were more complicated back in Allen's younger days, his epiphany now is encapsulated in this film's very title. Love, happiness, job satisfaction and everything else in life are, as this film's Boris Yellnikoff (Larry David) keeps reminding us, a fragile combination of luck and struggle to begin with: Ergo, we must do anything necessary — whatever works — in order to seize and hold onto it.
Even when peace and personal fulfillment involve thinking outside the box. Particularly when that's the case.
The problem, despite this film's upbeat message and truly delightful resolution, is that Yellnikoff — no accident, that last name — is such a bitter pill to swallow.
David, famous for his work in HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm
, more or less takes that character to misanthropic extremes in this film. Boris is a cranky, miserable, world-class grouch who somehow hasn't managed to drive off the small coterie of friends necessary to serve as a reluctant audience for his endless rants about people, society and every topic from child-rearing to gun control. A former Columbia professor and self-proclaimed genius who came close to winning a Nobel Prize for quantum mechanics, Boris now is known mostly for his failures: failed marriage, failed career and even a failed suicide attempt. He now spends his days insulting the small children unfortunate enough to study chess with him.
