Comedy is easy, getting murdered is easier.

How does Woody Allen get away with murder?

Allen writes and directs CRIMES AND MISDEMANORS, and let’s the murderer get away with it – as long as the murderer comes to a reconciliation with himself! By all accounts, isn’t that the most important realization that any human could have? It’s in all the media, all the biblical teachings, all the girly songs: Finding yourself – even if you find you’re a murderer – is the best discovery of all. Sunshine, orchestra swell, tears…

Having found his stride in this movie, Allen would get away with murder again in his brilliant MATCH POINT (2006).

Martin Landau is respected ophthalmologist Judah Rosenthal, whose affair with the fiery Dolores (Anjelica Huston) threatens to disrupt his family life when Dolores, uh, threatens to disrupt his family life, if Judah will not confess his affair to his wife (Clair Bloom).

In the B-story, Allen has planted himself as moviemaker Cliff Stern, infatuated with artistic free spirit producer Halley (Mia Farrow), cultivating her through the counter-intuitive method of inviting her to view one of his film projects – raw footage of a philosophy professor (Martin Bergmann playing Professor Louis Levy so convincingly, his footage looks lifted from the History Channel or National Geographic). Halley and Cliff hang out watching old movies together and chatting cinema esoterica; they both work for blowhard producer Lester (Alan Alda), who is cultivating Halley the old-fashioned way – bluntly trying to fuck her. And Cliff is married (to unexciting Joanna Gleason).

The great thing about Woody Allen is that he always asks the “big” questions in his films. Even his comedies explore these biggies, shot through the prism of dark humor. Through his Levy footage, Allen the writer explores the metaphysical nature of love and morality, even as events unfold in the movie to reflect Levy’s musings. (And on a side note, I love the way all Allen’s characters are smart. Not only displayed through their dialogue, but when we walk into any of their houses, we see their massive bookcases filled with books. I love that! How did this writer-director-star ever flourish in an industry – in a world – intent on catering to the Great Unwashed? CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS was nominated for numerous Academy, Golden Globes and BAFTA awards; the first film to win the 2010 20/20 Award for Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor; numerous other awards and nominations coming its way. Score one for Team Smart.)

You will notice that what we are aiming at when we fall in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox is that, when we fall in love, we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand, we ask our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted upon us. So that love contains in it the contradiction: The attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.
— Professor Levy (character)

While Cliff is busy falling in old-fashioned love, Judah (Landau) is desperate to preserve his family, resorting to calling his underworld brother (Jerry Orbach) to “fix” the mistress situation. It is not as cut-and-dried as it sounds, as Judah is torn morally, rent spiritually throughout the process, and in a daze, actually visits the murder site after the fact, seeing his mistress’s twisted, bloodied body on the floor, long before anyone in the world knows of her demise. It’s a fantastic take on something we’ve grown inured to over the years in movies – premeditated murder.

And with Cliff we see a situation all too familiar to us: the shy guy (Cliff) more intellectually appropriate for the woman than the arrogant rich showoff (Lester) – but the woman ending up with the showoff. After all the cultivating Cliff enacts on Halley, all it takes is money and power to have her proclaiming about the showoff, “He’s really a sweet guy!”

As with all Woody Allen movies, a simple plot outline does not suffice for the intelligence of the dialogue, the richness of his character interrelationships, and their movement among life’s complicated tapestry. Neither does it convey Allen’s razorwire delivery of comedic one-liners sprinkled mad-hatter throughout his scenes whether they be tragic, philosophical or even – comedic.

In the end, Judah sits with Cliff at a party they both happen to be attending. Being ambiguous about actual events, Judah feels compelled to tell Cliff his story and its outcome, of how he suddenly felt at peace with himself, even though he had committed a heinous act. It’s a brain-twisting wink to the audience – here’s the star telling the writer the plot of his own movie back to himself as the actor. And here’s the director as the character playing devil’s advocate and trying to find holes in his other character’s moral relativism. Is this the height of narcissistic conceit or a ménage à trois?

And then for Judah and Cliff to resign themselves to the fact that life has no happy endings; that a man must eventually pay for all his crimes and misdemeanors. Judah laments: “If you want a happy ending, you should go see a Hollywood movie.” But this is a happ– and this is a Hollywood mov– ahhh, my brain is twisted…

We are all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions. Moral choices. Some are on a grand scale. Most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are in fact the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying, and even to find joy from simple things like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.
— Professor Levy (character)

Remember, these aren’t the words of a real philosopher, these are not platitudes handed down from Freud’s era, or established in philosophical canon – these are the words of a grand filmmaker. These are the words of Woody Allen.

Now go, and may all your crimes and misdemeanors be reconciled…

END

Motor City Mad Man.

The David versus Goliath story – with David wielding an Intermittent Windshield Wiper.

Antonio Meucci, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Alfred Russell Wallace – all these men had their ideas stolen, only credited years, decades after their ideas had entered the fabric of society under other mens’ names: the telephone, Superman, evolution…

Who knows how many such men and women there have been over millennia? The nature of ideas is so amorphous, so inscrutable; “Steal from one man – that’s plagiarism. Steal from many men – that’s research.”

FLASH OF GENIUS shows us one of those millions who had his idea stolen, and his principled battle to regain credit for that idea: the intermittent windshield wiper.

Hard to believe this function once did not exist – but back in the late 1960s, when all windshield wipers only went OFF and ON, college professor and tinkerer, Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear, whom we meet – not coincidentally – lecturing on Ethics), hit upon the idea for the “Blinking Eye Windshield Wiper” (with “variable dwell” – that expression kills me!), a wiper that would function like the human eye – whenever it was necessary.

He patents the invention (his “Mona Lisa”) through his good friend, Gil Privick (Dermot Mulroney), who owns an auto dealership. He and Gil shop the Blinking Eye to Ford in Detroit, who promptly steal the idea. Because they’re a corporation and thus Bad Guys.

Poffy on variable dwell

So begins Kearns’s obsessive, decades-long battle, not for money, but for the right to call the invention his; for Ford to admit their outright theft of his patent. In a cute little irony, long before he went head-to-head with Detroit corps, Kearns called his brood of six kids, “The Board of Directors.” In a sadder irony, his wife (Lauren Graham) leaves him because with all his time spent on the court case, he was neglecting his kids – the same kids who would years later all end up clustered in his little apartment, helping him win his case!

Alan Alda enters the equation briefly as Gregory Lawson, a power lawyer for Kearns, but when he forces a settlement from Ford and Kearns won’t accept it unless Ford also acknowledge they stole his idea, Lawson is outa there, but not before warning Kearns of the difference between principled and pragmatic, “Time means nothing to them, money means nothing to them – they will bury you in countersuits, motions, delays; five years from now, you won’t be closer to a resolution. Your hair will turn gray…”

And he is right.

In court, Ford Corp (represented by CEO Mitch Pileggi, among others) claims the idea for an intermittent wiper was in the works anyway and Kearns simply put a few common components together to finalize the design.

And he is right.

Kearns, who represented himself in court, countered that argument by reading Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” pointing out that Dickens never invented the words themselves, but put them together in such a fashion that he created something new and spanky.

And he is right.

The beauty of a good story, that happens to be true: every side is right and every side is wrong.

Ford would offer Kearns higher and higher sums of money, through their lawyer who looked like a gangster, Charlie Defao (Tim Kelleher), eventually offering 30 million dollars to drop the case, which Kearns and his grown kids (now truly acting like a Board of Directors) refuse – on the grounds that the settlement still did not come with an admission of theft.

Well-paced, well-acted, frustrating, inspiring, poignant, FLASH OF GENIUS is a testament to the power of principles, yet a warning as to the cost of holding onto them with white knuckles. Kearns’s family life was destroyed, he suffered a mental breakdown and was in a sanitarium for a brief period.

Of course Kearns wins – in the usual manipulative inspirational music swell during the court decision – or this movie would not exist. But it is unfortunate that Kearns’s fight did not help the plight of all Inventors. We are all aware of those modern clauses in corporate contracts that claim everything from every individual as attributed to that corporation. There are no real inventors left, no single men allowed to claim that flash of genius. Humanity has been swallowed up by The Man.

Robert Kearns was one of the last Real Men to fight The Man, squandering his life to retain his Humanity. On variable dwell.

END

That Magnificent Man and His Flying Machines.

A powerful biopic of sex, insanity and aeroplanes. In any order.

Martin Scorsese directs THE AVIATOR based loosely on the life of Howard Hughes, with Leonardo DiCaprio adequately filling the shoes and flying the skies of the eccentric billionaire. (Leo’s star status slightly distracts, as does his phony accent. Jim Carrey – originally slated for the role – would have pulled off a better visual hook; young Hughes resembled Tyrone Power more than Leo and the older mustachioed Hughes looked more like Bernie from WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S.)

Set in an era when Scarface was Paul Muni, not Al Pacino; when Hell’s Angels were the U.S. Air Force 303rd Bombardment Group, not the guys who killed Meredith Hunter at Altamont; when Jane Russell, not Pam Anderson, was the dirtiest thing on two boobs, THE AVIATOR (written by John Logan) follows Hughes from his halcyon days of filming his revolutionary WWII flying aces film, HELL’S ANGELS (which would cross over from the silent era to sound, featuring flying sequences to curl toes and splice spleens, and making its star, Jean Harlow, a household name), to his political swashbuckling with airliners and aeroplane building, to his starlet-hopping, to locking himself in his germ-free room drinking his own urine. There is probably not enough time in any feature film to encapsulate the storied misadventures of Hughes, so the breakneck plot touches on everything it can in the time allotted.

That Magnificent Cucumber in his Flying Machine

The film’s narrative flits from one vignette to another, almost as if mirroring Hughes’ creatively spasming mind: scandal over starlet’s flesh (with Ian Holm giving a grand, impromptu lecture on how much boob exposure is too much); many OCD episodes, from being unable to eat meat once an uninvited guest touches his plate, to suddenly obsessing over washing his hands and then not wanting to touch the bathroom door to exit; electronically bugging his lover’s house through jealousy; his aeroplane crash which took off tops of houses in Beverly Hills and left him crippled; his political battles over the largest plane ever built, the H4 Hercules, which flew only once in 1947, with him at the controls…

With the ultimate phallic symbol at his fingertips, is it any wonder Hughes made mile-high headlines with Ava Gardener (Kate Beckinsale – mm! lovely!), Katherine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Jean Harlow, [insert any starlet]. We can surmise that they didn’t fall at Hughes’ feet for his looks alone, but because he could literally fly them to Paris for lunch. The movie portrays Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) as a main squeeze, when in reality she was just another fling. Her character is intimidating enough to throw Hughes momentarily, “Men can’t be friends with women – they must possess them, or leave them be.” Though she burbles truth, she can’t live by her words, as her whole ideology breaks down once she settles in as Howard’s toy.

Unable to sit still and contemplate anything wisely, Hughes’ many mental problems contributed to his diving into unfinished projects, obsessing over small details when the madness took him. He was also a racist – but pretty Leo can’t be a racist, so we never see this side of him. (Well, not until DJANGO UNCHAINED at least…)

At a party, two suspicious characters shadow Hughes, who asks his aide, “Who are those guys? Do they work for me?”

“Everybody works for you, Howard.”

Power like that is almost as beautiful as Leo himself.

END