Wonder Wheel

WONDER WHEEL               D                           
USA  (101 mi)  2017 d:  Woody Allen                 Wonderwheelmovie - Official site

Wow!  What an epic misfire.  Most have probably never seen a Woody Allen film that falls this far off the rails, unfunny and unchallenging, on the wrong footing from the very start, as it feels completely miscast, where viewers recognize the neurotic voice of Woody Allen in the narration, but don’t associate those words and thoughts with any of these actors, as the dialogue is simply not interchangeable.  Allen speaks with a pronounced ethnic Jewishness, which has always been a reference point in his films, but here the constant nagging tone is all wrong, as its Borscht Belt humor is carried out by Gentile actors, where the result is simply not the same, as the actors go through the motions but lack any hint of comedy or vaudeville humor, turning this into an agonizing dramatic misadventure with pretensions to Tennessee Williams or Eugene O’Neill, the great American playwrights, but without the depth and complexity, falling enormously short.  Framed as a Eugene O’Neill dysfunctional family set in the 50’s, where everything that can go wrong does, set entirely within the raucous confines of an overcrowded Coney Island amusement park, even the living quarters, intermixed with elements of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a spinoff apparently from 2013 Top Ten List #7 Blue Jasmine, it features an ongoing narration by a family outsider, Justin Timberlake as Mickey (normally a decent actor, but he’s all wrong as the voice of Woody Allen), an aspiring playwright who also works as a Coney Island lifeguard, who never once is seen rescuing a swimmer in distress.  Instead he intervenes in places where he shouldn’t, basically playing the field, fostering the hopes and dreams of two very different women.  First is Ginny (Kate Winslet), an emotionally-charged older waitess in an oyster bar who finds herself lost in a Blanche Dubois delirium, continually going on emotionally distraught monologues complaining of migraines and overwork, where her every last nerve is being tested.  She is a former actress whose career was derailed by a momentary lapse of judgement when she cheated on her husband, an anonymous jazz drummer who consequently left her, forever blaming herself for that mistake, sending her on an alcohol-fueled bender, leaving her with an emotionally damaged son (Jack Gore as Richie) who is clearly affected by his father’s absence, turning into a serial pyromaniac, lighting fires whenever the feeling hits him, which happens to be several times a day.  Finding a fellow alcoholic on the rebound, Ginny re-marries her current husband, a blue-collar carousel operator named Humpty, Jim Belushi, who spends the entire film doing his best Stanley Kowalski impression.  Into their lives walks Carolina (Juno Temple), the second woman, Humpty’s long-lost daughter who got herself involved with a dreamy young mob gangster with pockets full of cash, actually spilling the beans to the feds, where she’s now on the run with the mob looking for her, with shades of Mia Farrow in Broadway Danny Rose (1984).  This is a film where the sins of the parents are handed down to their own children, each an emotional basket case of frazzled nerve endings.

There isn’t a single likable character in this film, much of which is ugly and overwrought, delving into the ongoing personal insecurities and fears of people with barely enough money to scrape by, who constantly harp at one another for the choices they make, as they’re stuck in a rut that they can’t get out of, mostly feeling like caged animals.  Ginny is a whirlwind of fluctuating moods, much of it delusional, where she constantly thinks of no one but herself, growing hysterical when she thinks it’s all too much, with a claustrophobic world closing in on her, giving her no room to breathe, where she hasn’t an ounce of so-called freedom, literally suffocating before our eyes.  Humpty is a loud and blustery character who’s little more than a blowhard, all bark and no bite, that is since Ginny has removed alcohol from his daily regimen, keeping him off the sauce, as he grows brutally violent when drunk, though when times get rough, she takes a swig from a bottle she keeps hidden underneath the sink.  Timberlake’s confessional, on-going narration couldn’t be more off-putting, as it’s completely out of synch with the rest of the picture, where he’s more of a con man than he lets on, always shrouded in innocence, yet he’s a snake in the grass, never being honest with the audience, where the entire film feels like a rationalization for womanizing, yet he’s constantly being judgmental towards others without ever pointing the finger at himself.  At the center of the film is Ginny’s guilt, as she’s forever blaming herself for the pit she’s fallen into, stuck like a trapped insect, unable to pull her way out, as her husband has no ambition, leaving her having to pull the entire weight.  That heavy burden is constantly hovering over her, like a dark cloud, relentless and debilitating, as she’s been sucked into a life she hates, where everyone in it literally disgusts her, including herself, where her son’s constant obsession with setting fires is actually more of an irritation, as she never comes to grips with it, but simply blames him each and every time, having yet another panic attack.  For his part, Richie is cool with all the attention it provides, never fearing the consequences of getting caught, thinking so what, as it doesn’t hinder his actions, simply doing what he wants whenever he wants, with no interference.  From Ginny’s point of view, this is total bliss, as it’s unlimited freedom, exactly what’s missing in her overly constricted life, where she’s suffocating and can’t breathe, drowning in a life of squalor with a man she probably doesn’t even like, much less respect, but she sticks around as he rescued her from her prior emotional downfall.   

With a constantly repetitive jazz retro soundtrack that continuously plays the same song on repeat, feeling like a recurring headache after a while, the film is shot by veteran cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who creates a mosaic of constantly shifting light and color, especially faces, where a palette of artificiality bathes the screen throughout.  Enter Mickey, who offers Ginny a doorway out, having an affair that couldn’t come at a better time, where she goes all in, like water gushing out of a broken dam, becoming an unstoppable force.  While liking the attention of an older woman and all the associating drama, which he thinks will be excellent material for his plays, Mickey remains more coy about his motives, taking it slower, enjoying the ride, not turning it into such a big deal, which is what she does at every opportunity, constantly reminding him, where he’s her lifeline to a way out.  But Carolina’s youth and good looks complicate the status quo, perking up his antennae, as she’s not like other girls in the neighborhood, having traveled around the world in luxury and style, literally blowing him away, falling for her in spite of himself.  Knowing how this would crush Jenny, he does it anyway, even if it goes against all rationale of good sense, as Carolina is the forbidden fruit.  Of course he does this behind Ginny’s back, never letting on, pretending like nothing’s happening when he knows full well there’s a spark, which changes the dynamic with Ginny, who knows something’s up, but Mickey turns into another good-for-nothing man who deceives her, unable to trust the whole lot of them, turning against all men in the process, spiraling even more out of control, taking refuge in the bottle, with Humpty eventually joining in, becoming the picture of a pathetic drama without an ounce of humanity on display, where instead it’s all bluster.  The male characters are deplorable, every one a sleaze, while the women at least fare better in their scenes together, but in the end Allen’s grim and overly fatalistic view taints all.  With mob heavies Tony Sirico and Steven Schirripa from The Sopranos on Carolina’s tail, she is dangerous merchandise, making her all the more enticing to a young unattached male like Mickey, who seems to have his own issues with illusions, where he’s like a deer in the headlights, hypnotized by her allure, unable to help himself, striking while the iron is hot.  The stage is set for a final showdown with Ginny, but like Blanche, she’s already lost in the cobwebs of her own delusions, barely recognizable as a person, losing every last trace of her dignity, where it all derails into a tailspin of unfiltered torment, each little bit only adding to the collective hell of having to endure more, wiping out any hint of reality, where all that’s left is a waking nightmare that never ends, where she can’t ever wake up, stuck in an endless Sisyphean death spiral of human misery and suffocation, becoming all-consuming, like a fever dream.  Lost in the haze, the film is back where it starts, mired in that sinking feeling of utter futility.  Spare us the drama, Woody, as behind the curtain, nothing is real.  

The Social Network

Aaron Sorkin

Mark Zuckerberg

THE SOCIAL NETWORK           B+                      

USA  (120 mi)  2010  ‘Scope  d:  David Fincher

So this is what Aaron Sorkin has been up to?  The opening 5 minutes of this film is a blast of blistering energy, a hilarious comedy satire of Sorkin-written dialogue, where like a speed chess match it movies quickly with verbal sparring and jabs, where one’s attention is simultaneously on several things at once, responding to comments made two or three moves back.  This is assaultive dialogue, where words are spoken with a vehement purpose and hurled with a furious intent to do harm.  This short sequence plays out like the language of live theater before the opening credits begin and is the premise for the rest of the film.  Jesse Eisenberg, more mature and confident here, never better, is Mark Zuckerberg, a brilliant 19-year old Harvard sophomore in the fall term of 2003 having a conversation in a bar with Erica Albright (Rooney Mara), another bright student who finds his manner obnoxious and offensive, blind to the views of others, making it clear to him that she’s rejecting him not because he’s some geek or a nerd that she doesn’t like, but because he’s an “asshole.”  This is the predominate theme for the rest of the film, as it immediately prompts his wounded male pride to go back to the dorm, drink a few beers, and in the course of four hours, with the help of a few dorm roommates, invent a computer template for Facebook, though this initial version was called Facemash.  Driven by a seething adolescent resentment, while simultaneously making vicious personal blog entries calling the young woman a bitch and making unflattering references to farm animals, Zuckerberg spent his time hacking into the database of nine Harvard dormitory resident computer files and stole all the female photos, updating the women into a comparative side by side photo contest called “Hot or Not,” where the Harvard students could pick the hottest between two photos, which generated 22,000 hits in just the first four hours online before crashing Harvard’s servers, cementing his legendary status on campus as a geek genius loathed by women who weren’t happy about having their pictures stolen and then placed on exhibition for fratboy male appraisal. 

What really works here is the level of free-wheeling viciousness on display right alongside continual outbursts of supreme intelligence, both signs of a Sorkin screenplay, loosely adapted from interviews and Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires.  Fincher’s accelerating speed however is especially notable, as the furious pace shows the exuberance of youth like few other films, where these guys are incredibly focused on their creation, like the two geeks in PRIMER (2004) who invent a time machine in their garage, but this invention generates instant recognition around campus, something most geeks never receive.  Zuckerberg eventually refines his idea, but only after the prompting from a couple of prospective Olympic athlete rowers, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both played by Armie Hammer using the latest in digital technology), identical twins who patronizingly promise to rebuild his damaged reputation through the prestigious hallowed grounds of their all-male Porcellain Club, supposedly the pinnacle of privilege and social success at Harvard, if he would build them a social media website that could connect Harvard men exclusively to other schools around the country.  From this dare, per se, Zuckerberg on his own, with the help of his roommate Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) launches Facebook in February, 2004, a site where friends can upload their own comments and pictures to share with other like-minded friends, “taking the entire social experience of college and putting it all online,” an idea that explodes with popularity.  The irony, of course, is that these two are socially awkward but extremely bright kids using their knowledge to actually invent something completely foreign to their own personalities, having few friends and even fewer girls, yet these socially dysfunctional people invent the most popular Internet site ever devised driven by a desire to increase their chances with the opposite sex by promoting a computer social networking site for people to share with their friends, a particular social commodity they don’t have.  In a sense, they create a virtual world, where the thrill is watching the intense reaction by others while the originators of the idea remain aloof, socially inept, and forever locked behind computer screens, which pretty much defines the detached nature of new age friendships, where one out of every fourteen people in the world has a Facebook account.

What follows, of course, are the inevitable sour grapes lawsuits, where the success of the website is beyond anyone’s wildest comprehension, so people want a piece of it, where both the Winklevoss twins and Zuckerberg’s only friend in the world, his roommate Eduardo, each claim this was partially their idea.  Zuckerberg’s response:  “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook.”  While we hear depositions being taken with lawyers in private rooms, where Zuckerberg occasionally interjects his candid comments which cut right through the legalese, as he continues to exert his mental superiority even as he’s being sued for hundreds of millions of dollars, we also see the tragic and senseless deterioration of his friendship with Eduardo, who fronted the original money to get Facebook started, enough to hire a few programmers who could connect them to a few other Ivy League schools, also Boston University and Stanford, but the project continued to expand.  Zuckerberg eventually meets Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the founder of Napster, a site that downloaded music for free, who had already gone through the litigation process with the music companies, so he had a track record and awareness, as he was also a computer savvy guy who could help incorporate and expand Facebook into other continents.  He interested Zuckerberg immediately, as Parker could introduce them to some investors and he knew they should never settle for nickel and dimes when this idea, which he calls “a once-in-a-generation, holy shit idea,” was worth billions.  His influence and Silicon Valley West coast connections eventually replaced Eduardo, who kept insisting early on that they advertise on the site, where Zuckerberg and Parker disagreed, thinking they would lose the “coolness” of what drew kids to the site in the first place, so they were inclined to keep the site free from aggravating and unnecessary pop-ups, receiving hefty investments from PayPal founder Peter Thiel until eventually Microsoft in 2007 purchased the right to place ads on Facebook which placed the value of the company around $15 billion, making Zuckerberg at age 23 the youngest billionaire in history. 

The film’s real success is being able to trace the root of such monumental changes in our lives in just the past few years, and doing so with complete coherence.  Fincher’s editing throughout is superb, as he seamlessly jumps back and forth between conflicting information being revealed in the lawyer’s offices which is then seen in fuller detail through flashback sequences where it all plays out, where it’s hard to keep track of the timeline involved, so the audience is never sure about the chronological order of events.  This method mimics how the Internet is used, freely moving back and forth in time seemingly at random, depending on how it’s being used.  One of the more dazzling sequences is watching the Winklevii twins, as Zuckerberg sarcastically calls them, at a boat race regatta which is scored to the frenzied crescendos from Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” Grieg - In the Hall of the Mountain King - YouTube (2:41).  What’s especially purposeful is the way the computer storyline connects to an international athletic event, and where the twins are humorously portrayed as notoriously sore losers.  The twins, by the way, eventually placed 6th at the Beijing Olympics for the men’s pair rowing event, but their careers are really structured around winning a $65 million dollar settlement, a nice tidy sum which should help solidify any of their financial concerns.  No one comes across unscathed in this film, though Eduardo may be the most sympathetic, if naïve, character, while what remains fascinating in the portrait of Zuckerberg is the way he continually relishes flaunting his condescending air of superiority while he remains flummoxed and dumbfounded by the negative impact this has on others, where his otherwise intensely shy and vulnerable side remains hidden, safely protected behind a firewall of new age gadgetry.  For every new door he opens, he slams several others shut behind him through sheer arrogance and a fondness for humiliation.  What is clear, however, is the frantic and hilarious pace of the opening eventually slows down when they leave college life for the West coast, where youthful ideals soon become replaced by hardcore business decisions and personal betrayals, where people, especially those closest to you, can get hurt by petty grudges that certain individuals retain seemingly forever.  Zuckerberg is no exception.  What’s truly remarkable is that this is one of the most extraordinary responses to being rejected by a girl, though who knows, Shakespeare may have been similarly motivated.