“STARDUST MEMORIES”
Written and Directed by Woody Allen
***1/2 (three and a half stars)
In late 2005, I exited the now defunct Westgate Art Cinemas elated after a screening of Woody Allen’s London set drama “Match Point,” which told the story of a former professional tennis player’s descent into dangerous lust, disingenuous social climbing and brutal murder with the larger themes of random luck within a meaningless universe as its framework. It was a brilliantly written and executed production made even livelier with Allen’s apparent artistic rejuvenation by moving his films to European locales. Anyhow, as I walked out of the theater, I happened to overhear a conversation by an older couple behind me. The gentleman expressed how much he had enjoyed the film and then his female companion answered with the following statement: “It was good…,” she began tentatively and continued with an air of disappointment, “but it wasn’t…funny.” The gentleman heaved a deep sigh, of what I felt to be incredulous disbelief, simply because I shared his sentiment.
The prolific Woody Allen, who releases a new film nearly every year and whose wonderful “Midnight In Paris” counting as his 41st film, has long desired to create a body of work that contains seriously minded motion pictures to sit alongside his comedic offerings. After hearing that woman’s statement, it just made me want to smack my forehead in disbelief that in 2005, after almost 40 years of making movies, that people’s perceptions of Allen have remained just as rigid as they were in the 1970’s when he began expanding his artistic palette by leaving the slapstick comedies of “Take The Money And Run” (1969) and “Bananas” (1971) behind for the brilliant (and Oscar winning) “Annie Hall” (1977), which was then followed by the bleak Ingmar Bergman inspired “Interiors” (1978). Hadn’t people realized by now what kind of a filmmaker Woody Allen happened to be? Didn’t they know by now that “being funny” was not paramount to him at all?
After seeing “Midnight In Paris,” I found myself to be in a “Woody Allen frame of mind” and I wanted to sift through some of his previous films, some of which I own and others I have not ever seen. I decided that it was time to take in a viewing of his controversial satire “Stardust Memories” released in 1980 immediately after his enormously celebrated “Manhattan” (1979). Not even seen as just an artistic curve ball, some audience members and critics found it to be downright insulting to the very fans whose adoration of his work had allowed him to even continue to create films in the first place.
While I certainly wouldn’t go that far, “Stardust Memories” is indeed somewhat of an oddity within the Woody Allen oeuvre. But, it is a very good oddity, filled with the type of surrealistic touches that warrant discussion, forces viewers to pause and think about what they have seen and in its sly way, demands more than one viewing. While I haven’t had the opportunity to make that second viewing myself yet, I did want to gather my first impressions for your reading pleasure as “Stardust Memories” is indeed a particularly one-of-a-kind experience from a one-of-a-kind filmmaker.
Allen stars as comic filmmaker Sandy Bates who has grown fatigued with being a comedian and is in the process of creating what he hopes to be his impressionistic dramatic masterpiece. As he battles various heartless studio executives who are attempting to re-edit his dramatic work, Bates is invited to be the Guest Of Honor at a weekend retrospective of his previous films. Throughout the weekend, Sandy is constantly interrupted by adoring fans, show business hopefuls, lawyers, accountants and whomever else that desperately wants his attention and particular brand of stardust that may hopefully elevate their own celebrity hopes and potential for fame and fortune.
Sandy romantic life is equally complicated as he mourns the failed relationship with the manic depressive and institutionalized Dorie (Charlotte Rampling), nurtures a new romance with Isobel (Marie-Christine Barrault), the gorgeous French woman and Mother of two small screaming tots and flirts heavily with Daisy (Jessica Harper), the moody classical violinist Sandy meets at the film festival.
As Sandy becomes consumed with irritations and paranoia, the film slides between the present, the past, hallucinations, dark fears and dream sequences without warning. Sandy Bates’ increasingly fractured mind and dwindling spirit continues to question the meaning of life and his place within it as he wonders just what is the purpose of making silly little movies while existing within a ruthless, cold, violent and seemingly heartless world.
On the surface, “Stardust Memories” is a razor sharp Hollywood satire filtered through Woody Allen’s trademark and peerless sophisticated literary wit. Yet, this film possess a more dreamlike quality as well. Along with the film's non-linear structure, Allen, in collaboration with Cinematographer Gordon Willis, has presented this experience in sparkling black and white photography which creates an otherworldly quality.
Yes, after watching “Stardust Memories,” the parallels between Woody Allen and Sandy Bates are blindingly obvious and I would figure, they would be to you as well. Bates is easily Allen’s cinematic doppelganger in terms of artistic vision and philosophical temperament. In fact, throughout the film, many characters call out to Sandy with the formal “Mr. Bates” (say that ten times fast-get it?), a low-brow joke that glaringly exhibits a lacerating self-awareness, although if it is of the character or the creator, that is not fully known.
Since “Stardust Memories” contains the demands of fame and the sometimes contentious relationship between artist and fan as major themes, I can easily see why critics and fans did have major problems with this film at the time of its release. Sandy Bates’ fans are presented as a grotesque cavalcade of sycophants, interrupting seemingly every single moment of his day with requests for autographs, submissions of ideas for new movies and proclamations of how much they all adore his work, especially his “early funny films.” Everyone is photographed garishly, like characters in a Federico Fellini film, with unusual facial features exemplified, accentuated and exaggerated for a “through the looking glass” effect. Here is where I think that maybe character and creator separate because while the character may see his fans this way, there is truly no way to know for certain if this is the way Woody Allen sees his fans and critics and I would gather that he probably doesn’t…at least, not all of the time.
And perhaps, what we are witnessing is something more of a non-literal trip through the mind of a frustrated artist. Woody Allen has stated in interviews that Sandy Bates is essentially going through a nervous breakdown and considering the cacophony of voices and colliding subject matter contained within the voices, that description brings a clarity to the proceedings. As Sandy Bates' “hangers on” revolve around him endlessly pitching script ideas, you will also hear pleas to save the ecology, references to all manner of urban life nightmares (references to murder, crime and rape are all mentioned), and Bates himself claims to carry a gun due to his on-going Nazi paranoia. Allen is also very prophetic with the dangerous and unhinged side of the celebrity culture as “Stardust Memories” also contains a moment (not unlike another sequence in Robert Altman’s 1975 masterpiece “Nashville”) that pre-dates the December 8, 1980 assassination of John Lennon and other violent crimes against human beings who happen to be famous.
I loved the scenes set within Sandy Bates’ apartment where one wall contains a full sized mural of some image, sometimes lovely, sometimes horrific, that may reflect his state of mind at that moment. Another example of the psychological breakdown theme for me was set during, what I thought was the film’s most effective sequence as Sandy recalls the last time he saw Dorie. What we, the audience, see is from what I think would be Sandy’s perspective...actually through his eyes. It is a series of jump-cut edited close-up shots of Charlotte Rampling’s beautiful face emotionally falling apart.
And how about those women anyway? In a really provocative fashion, I am wondering if the three women, the three loves in Sandy Bates’ life are actually not three different women at all. Perhaps they are either just variations of the same woman in Sandy’s past (or present) or if they are Sandy Bates’ idea of what an ideal mate would or could be.
While comedic, “Stardust Memories” is filled with more than its fair share of emotional despair but before the proceedings become too mired in suffering and brutally nihilistic, Allen provides us with a tremendous grace note of a moment as Sandy remembers a brief moment when there seemed to be a certain alchemy in the universe. When a meal, a soft breeze, a gaze from Dorie set to a soundtrack by Louis Armstrong congealed perfectly and at that time, life made sense.
It amazes me how much Woody Allen can pack into a movie that has a running time that is a hair shy of 90 minutes, yet never feels over-stuffed, convoluted or remotely messy. His pacing is clean and quick and he juggles themes of celebrity, fame, adoration, romance, existentialism, religion, racism, and one philosophical concept after another effortlessly. And again, the film is just gorgeous to regard visually!
“Stardust Memories” may be one of Allen most confounding and prickliest entries in his artistic canon but if you are a fan or are just a bit curious to enter the mindset of artists and their artistry, I gracious invite you to place this film into your queue. It may not go down as easily as one of Woody Allen’s “earlier, funnier movies” but that does not make it any less worthy of your attention.
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