Melinda
Saw Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda last night. Somewhat of a return to the high-holy days in Woody Allen's meta-film catalogue. Not a quirky quiet masterpiece like Zelig or low-brow meta-film love story like The Purple Rose of Cairo, but sedate and measured, solidly performed and executed.
Allen reenacts the construct of the debates between Agathon and Aristophones in Plato's Symposium- that interminable conversation between the truth and valued merits of tragedy or comedy in drama. The structure of Melinda is brilliant and simple: there's this dinner party of four people, two of them are playwrights. One writes tragic, the other comedic and they're having a dinner time discussion over which is more-true in the human experience: tragedy or comedy. The rest of the film is the telling of this story of 2 versions of Melinda. It is not a direct translation of comedy to tragey- the two stories coincide in many ways, but they're not the same story.
A simple story can explore a lot about how we percieve and deal with the world, and how drama and storytelling fits into our human need. Drama is not escapist- it is reactionary to and actively involved in the world. It is the greatest indicator of how we, individually and culturally, deal with our human experiences in the world. Occassionally a film like Melinda will push forward the agenda of film itself as a relevent medium of exploration. Other meta-films of value in recent years have been scant, but films such as Coffee and Cigarettes can hold the same function. But film, like literature and other cultural artforms, are direct chronicles of cultural thought and experession.
Allen's long career working with this kind of material is inately rebellious- not only does he reject the typical film-telling techniques and methods (which innumerable directors have borrowed over the years as an impression of their own rebellion), but he rejects the very concept of entertainment as such: for neither of these playwrights in this film is the story of Melinda a toss-off story. It is not escapist fiction- it is human drama. Their perception of how you deal with it, how you parse it, differs, but they have grasped this simple truth: that the question of the drama is relevent and must be dealt with, not ignored as an escapade.
It is interesting to think that the politics of this film are a cultural- Allen rejects the fantasy that things can be glossed over and forgotten, or dropped into cliched irrelevence. It is an ultimate rebellion, in a sense, of what American society has trended toward through Allen's entire career.
Allen reenacts the construct of the debates between Agathon and Aristophones in Plato's Symposium- that interminable conversation between the truth and valued merits of tragedy or comedy in drama. The structure of Melinda is brilliant and simple: there's this dinner party of four people, two of them are playwrights. One writes tragic, the other comedic and they're having a dinner time discussion over which is more-true in the human experience: tragedy or comedy. The rest of the film is the telling of this story of 2 versions of Melinda. It is not a direct translation of comedy to tragey- the two stories coincide in many ways, but they're not the same story.
A simple story can explore a lot about how we percieve and deal with the world, and how drama and storytelling fits into our human need. Drama is not escapist- it is reactionary to and actively involved in the world. It is the greatest indicator of how we, individually and culturally, deal with our human experiences in the world. Occassionally a film like Melinda will push forward the agenda of film itself as a relevent medium of exploration. Other meta-films of value in recent years have been scant, but films such as Coffee and Cigarettes can hold the same function. But film, like literature and other cultural artforms, are direct chronicles of cultural thought and experession.
Allen's long career working with this kind of material is inately rebellious- not only does he reject the typical film-telling techniques and methods (which innumerable directors have borrowed over the years as an impression of their own rebellion), but he rejects the very concept of entertainment as such: for neither of these playwrights in this film is the story of Melinda a toss-off story. It is not escapist fiction- it is human drama. Their perception of how you deal with it, how you parse it, differs, but they have grasped this simple truth: that the question of the drama is relevent and must be dealt with, not ignored as an escapade.
It is interesting to think that the politics of this film are a cultural- Allen rejects the fantasy that things can be glossed over and forgotten, or dropped into cliched irrelevence. It is an ultimate rebellion, in a sense, of what American society has trended toward through Allen's entire career.
posted by General Stan at 11:45 AM
1 Comments:
Plato also sets up most of his argument in terms of binaries (love/hate; tragic/comic) which is also can be a kind of nationalistic tendency, particularly in America (Repo/Demo, With Us/Against Us, Fat/Thin, Good/Evil). I don't know that you can call Plato proto-Marxist, but why the hell not? In fact, in ways, Plato was a proto-Stalinist- both adopted and re-purposed ideologies of their predecessors for certain gains: hard to say that Plato was in it all for solely the purpose of elevating Socrates.
Allen does work with these motifs in a political sense as well, although, to me, it seems as though the political rebellion is one that favors nuance rather than reduction and indemnification of the other. Can't say for sure, though. But that's my sense.
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