Not even Colin Firth can quite pull this one out of the hat. Well, maybe just an ear. ‘Pure poppycock!’ says Stanley, Firth’s character. Not quite, but almost.
But let’s cut Woody a little slack here. You know what you are getting with a Woody Allen flick: neuroses, existentialist dilemma, mixed in with cute one-liners, evocative music and settings. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. Remember the start of Annie Hall and the young Alvy on the psychiatrist’s couch with his mother? He won’t do his homework, and why? Because – “The universe is expanding” and so “What’s the point?” Existentialist gold, or a mother’s nightmare. This movie, however, shines a lot less, and we care less.
Woody Allen is now 78 and his latest, Magic in the Moonlight, feels like an existentialist debate in Woody’s own ponderous head played out on film, as if there’s some attempt at unity with this expanding universe, some attempt to finally get it. Reason or mysticism? Science or something more? God or no God? Knock once for “Yes” and twice for “No” – and watch out for levitating candles.
It’s 1928, the ‘Roaring Twenties’ when not everyone was roaring, when America became a great global force, jaunty jazz tunes, but with the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression just around the 30s corner. All seems dandy but there’s trouble ahead. Colin Firth plays Brit Stanley Crawford or else successful illusionist Wei Ling Soo. Stanley performs before an enthralled audience in oriental make-up and a glitzy costume, in the guise of absurd alter ego, and woos in the cash through sleight-of-hand and trickery. He can make elephants vanish, but of course he can’t. So there’s this big elephant in the room no-one will discuss. God, identity, place in the world, a looming crisis, personal and international.
So Stanley’s a miserable git, a shouty curmudgeon. He’s asked by an old pal to sniff out mystic and general communicator with all things out-there, the pretty and slightly kooky Sophie Baker (Emma Stone). Sophie is wide-eyed and all wonderment but suspected of being a hoax, an illusionist herself. Brice Catledge (Hamish Linklater), of the lavishly wealthy Catledges, is something of a sop and smitten with Sophie, serenading her endlessly with a silly song and a ukulele. Is Sophie, and her hanger-on mummy, in it for the dough?
So off Stanley pops to the rather sumptuous Catledge pad on the Côte d’Azur, armed with bagfuls of cynicism. It’s all very Art Deco and red Alfa Romeo and, of course, moonlight. Also local, wouldn’t-you-know-it, is Stanley’s favourite aunt, Aunt Vanessa (Eileen Atkins), a kind of secret matchmaker one imagines (everything is an illusion don’t forget). Well, what coincidence, we might say – and Stanley would agree. There’s nothing spiritual or metaphysical about our world and this expanding universe at all. He’s very much of the Prof Dawkins camp, devout atheist and the ‘greatest debunker’ of all ghostly myth and hokum.
Trouble is, poor Stanley just can’t suss out the Sassy Sophie and is himself soon smitten and, worst of all, converted to ideas of God and ghouls. Sophie reveals to Stanley details of his life which, surely, she could not possibly have known without divine intuition. Sophie also sees right through Stanley’s feeble charade to expose her as a contrived sha(wo)man. He becomes enamoured, but not with Sophie as femme fatale but as prophet or seer, someone who shows him there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in his meagre philosophy.
This is the premise, then: God or no God. Sophie is for Stanley a figure of enlightenment, showing him that it’s love, human love, not spooky séances, which is the real magic deal. But Woody falls short. The lines are too scripted, and often too clever for the characters who speak them; even our Mr Firth seems to announce his lines rather than mean them at times. The whole movie feels like a bit of a fraud. There’s the fakest-looking storm you will ever see, and the moonlight and stars seem painted into the sky. There are no discreet leaps of drama, no heartfelt moments when love convincingly grows. It all feels rather stagey, rather like Wei Ling Soo and his artful magic.
Finally we are told ‘Delusion is necessary’. And if we don’t delude ourselves? Well, we’ll end up like the young Alvy: on the couch not doing our homework coz the universe is expanding. The movie mixes serious discussion with flippant humour but it’s a poor potion to swallow.
Verdict ★★
