Magic in the Moonlight is a paper-thin trifle — but somehow is still hard to watch. BuzzFeed Film Critic Alison Willmore and Chief Los Angeles Correspondent Kate Aurthur discuss the film’s pitfalls.
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Kate Aurthur: Alison, I don't even know where to start, so I'll just begin with this: Anyone getting excited that Woody Allen's new movie, Magic in the Moonlight, will offer a banquet of fictional opportunities to pore over Allen's real-life tribulations — his daughter Dylan Farrow's persistent rape accusations against him — is going to be disappointed. This film is one of his trifles. But there are things to discuss, of course. Like that the movie begins with Colin Firth's character performing onstage in 1928 Berlin — in yellowface. That got my attention! How about you?
Alison Willmore: It definitely made me wince, though white magicians who tried to create a sense of mystery with a Orientalist persona were a real, mostly period-appropriate thing. It plays into the story, in that Stanley (Firth) believes he'll remain unrecognized when he goes to debunk supposed psychic and spiritualist Sophie (Emma Stone), because people only know him as a performer as "Wei Ling Soo." It's also unnecessary and uncomfortable, especially right at the start of the film, a bit of old-fashioned racism tossed on screen for laughs. (And it's another problematic example of movies and TV acting like this treatment of Asians is somehow safe — hard to imagine a movie starting with a lighthearted scene in which its lead is in blackface.) But that willful obliviousness is something that I've come to associate with Allen, who often seems relevant only accidentally (as with Blue Jasmine), and this movie feels even more like it exists in a hermetic bubble given how little bearing it has to Allen's recent experiences. Kate, what did you think of the yellowface? And, more importantly, what did you think of the romance between Firth and Stone?
Kate: You're right, no movie would be so blithe about blackface. (Rightly.) Nor would Firth, I imagine. Also, the resulting jokes — "I dreamt I was being followed by a sinister Chinese!" is a line Stone has to deliver at one point — were not only racially tinged, but hacky. Like the film, frankly!
The romance between Firth (age 53) and Stone (age 25) existed on a few levels for me. It barely registered as a romance, in the same way this movie is so light it's almost nothing. As with most Allen couples, I didn't like the way Stanley thought of Sophie: She eats too much, and he calls her "an uneducated nobody." But it's not like he's hurling bile at her, the way Allen sometimes does at his female leads (Cate Blanchett's Jasmine in Blue Jasmine, or Anjelica Huston's Dolores in Crimes and Misdemeanors). Stanley is supposed to be a puffed-up jerk. I like both actors very much, but they had no chemistry — I just wanted it all to end.
On a symbolic level, though, I was interested that the screenplay, which was written and shot before Dylan Farrow told the world in February that her father's fame is a source of continuous pain for her, is basically about an older man trying to prove that a younger woman is a liar.
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Alison: It also, like a lot of Allen's older man/younger woman pairings, falls somewhere between romantic and paternalistic, which has all sorts of unfortunate resonances with the Farrow case and Allen's current relationship. Stanley's more learned, more worldly, more aristocratic, and he shows Sophie around, talks down to her (he basically negs her into loving him), and eventually sets aside the fiancée he sees as his equal in order to deign to be in a relationship with her. Even Firth and Stone, who are very charming leads, can't make the love story any more lively, but, as you've said, that's kind of a relief — I was also happy it ended when it did.
I confess I've never been a great Allen devotee — I've liked some of his films and have been left cold by others, but I've never felt the depth of personal connection to his work that some of my friends and colleagues do. But watching this movie, for maybe the first time ever, I found that my awareness of everything Allen's been accused of actively overshadowed my ability to take in what was on screen on its own basis. Magic in the Moonlight is a weirdly innocuous and determinedly insubstantial thing to attach that kind of weight to…but that was part of the problem. I don't think it's a good movie, but I also just don't want to watch a bubbly, escapist period romp from someone who's just been involved in such an ugly, public battle over renewed claims he molested his 7-year-old daughter.
In a recent interview he did with the New York Times , Allen told reporter Dave Itzkoff that he didn't think the recent turmoil would have any affect on whether people would want to see Magic in the Moonlight, saying, "No thoughts like that occur to me. They only occur to you guys." I feel like that's an attitude as willingly turned away from reality as the film itself.
Kate: The other relevant things Allen says to Itzkoff are: "I don't think anyone has ever not come to a film of mine that they thought they would enjoy" and "Nothing keeps them away if they think they'll enjoy the film. And if they don't think they'll enjoy the film, nothing we can do ever brings them in."
Anecdotally, I don't think he's correct there, either. I have friends who are fans of Allen's who have told me they won't be seeing his movies anymore.
Allen's public stance on pretty much everything is mysterious to me, though, a feeling that reached an apex during the publication of his ham-handed, enraged, poorly written self-defense also in the New York Times the week after Farrow's piece ran. But the truth is, he doesn't have to do much defending, considering that most of the actors whom Farrow called out in her treatise seemed not to give what she wrote a second thought. Publicly, anyway. Even promoting this movie, Firth and Stone were on Good Morning America , and not only did George Stephanopoulos go out of his way not only not to mention the elephant in the room, but when Firth said about Allen, "He's not big on the preliminaries, the social graces," which could lead to an interesting conversation about something substantial, Stephanopoulos stepped in to say, "You just get to work," cutting off the conversation. Isn't GMA a news organization? This is all to say that yes, I agree: I won't ever be able to watch another Allen movie without thinking about what Farrow wrote, even when it's this dollop of foam. I had pretty much felt that way since the explosion of these accusations in 1992, but it's more salient now.
Yet somehow I can still appreciate, and often like, Roman Polanski's movies. Help me, Alison! How does the artist vs. their art debate this work within a person, and why isn't it consistent? (Confession: I am "the person" in question.)
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