Woody Allen’s Dark Vision
(© Tristan Fuge)
Woody Allen once said: “If you’re not in the mood for my obsessions, then you may not be in the mood for my films.” Indeed, Allen — who will be 75 in December — has been making us laugh, cry, and think by sharing his obsessions via his films (and plays) for over 40 years, earning him numerous Academy Awards and other honors in the process.
His latest film, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, which opens on September 22, revolves around several couples who become enmeshed in a roundelay of marriage, divorce, infidelity, and parenthood as they search for the promise of some certainty to hold onto.
Anthony Hopkins and Gemma Jones star as Alfie and Helena, a long-married British couple who divorce because he wants to stay young and she has gotten older. The other characters also include their daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and son-in-law Roy (Josh Brolin); a clairvoyant named Cristal (Pauline Collins); Charmaine (Lucy Punch), a gold-digging “actress-model-cum hooker”; the super-sexy Dia (Freida Pinto); and Sally’s suave boss, Greg (Antonio Banderas).
“The film was an attempt to deal with the inability of people to relate to one another, of people needing some certainty in life, people deluding themselves into some sense that there is some purpose to life, when in fact it’s a meaningless experience and yet in the end even faith in anything is better than no faith at all,” says Allen, who admits he’s explored such themes before, most notably in the film Interiors.
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
While just about every actor alive wants to work with Allen — who has guided such performers as Diane Keaton and Dianne Wiest to Oscar wins — the experience can be something of a mixed bag. “I don’t like to socialize with the actors, I like to hire great people and let them do what they do. Actors never really know why they’re good and I don’t want to impose my ideas on them,” he says. But that doesn’t mean they get to do what they want, notes Allen. “Josh called me after he read the script and asked if he can play the character in a wheelchair. (Adds Brolin: “Part of that was just to start a dialogue with Woody and I enjoyed how much he hated it.” )
As for Watts, she and Allen had never even met before she arrived on the set. “She had nothing to say to me and what was I going to say to her? So there was the usual insincere exchange of ‘I love your work and I love your work.’ It’s not that we don’t love each other’s work, but it had nothing to do with the day’s shoot,” he notes. “Then, right away, she had to do her hardest scene in the whole film.”
While Allen calls himself a “lazy” filmmaker — noting that he prefers to finish a day’s shooting by 6pm — he also admits that he works all the time as a way of “keeping from obsessing morbidly.” In fact, he has continued to make at least one film per year since 1989, along with writing such plays as A Second Hand Memory and Writer’s Block. He is already at work on post-production for his next film, Midnight in Paris, co-starring Michael Sheen, Marion Cotilliard, Allison Pill, and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, which is due for release in 2011.
And if genetics are any indication, he’ll be working for another decade or two. “My father lived to a hundred. My mother lived to almost 96,” he notes. “If there is anything to heredity, I should be able to make films for another 17 years.”
