Shaun de Waal
MOVIE OFTHEWEEK
We have become accustomed, over many years now, to the sound of old-time jazz – accompanied by those plain white-on-black credits, always in the same slightly ornate, old-fashioned type – opening a Woody Allen movie. Now, for the first time, in Sweet and Lowdown, these jaunty strains signal the beginning of a jazz movie. Given his longstanding interest in pre-bop jazz, it’s surprising that Allen has only now got around to making such a movie.
Sweet and Lowdown is the story of Emmet Ray, a fictional jazzman made to seem real by the documentary-style talking-heads inserts of jazz experts, including Allen himself, discussing Ray and his music. Warren Beatty used this technique in Reds to remind us that the American communist John Reed was a real person and his adventures true; Allen, on the other hand, is playfully pretending his fiction is fact.
Not that it matters: most fiction, on some level, pretends to be real. And it certainly doesn’t matter to one’s enjoyment of Sweet and Lowdown that this jazzman didn’t really exist. The film’s spell is such, its easy-going narrative style so appealing, that one just immerses oneself in the beautiful recreation of the period and follows the tale of this complex, difficult man – himself an “embellisher” of his own life- story, as many of the early jazzmen were (Jelly Roll Morton, for instance, springs to mind). Allen also reflects in the film the way that there can be different versions of a single anecdote, just as there can be wildly divergent improvisations on the same basic theme in a jazz number.
Sean Penn plays Ray with some fire, and manages to gain our sympathy for someone who is basically, for all his talent and charm, an unreliable, spendthrift, dishonest egomaniac. He is entertaining and often likeable, but one might feel that on balance one would probably rather not be a friend of his – certainly not a lover or his manager. (Watch out for a brief cameo by John Waters in the latter role.)
Samantha Morton plays one love-interest of his with touching sensitivity; Uma Thurman plays another with regal grace. Ray’s romances have to fight it out with his music for priority in his scheme of things, except that he may not be telling himself the whole truth when it comes to the importance of his music in his life. It is also a means of escape.
Allen tells Ray’s story with the virtuoso cinematic and narrative skill that is the mark of his later films (and the soundtrack is, of course, lovely). He holds our attention effortlessly, despite the film’s episodic nature, and his sense of humour is as tart as ever. He just gets better and better all the time.
Sweet and Lowdown is not a “big” Woody Allen movie, not one of his deeply trenchant unravellings of the way sophisticated neurotics relate to each other and the world. With its deceptively light touch, it has the air of a jeu d’esprit, as did the underrated and experimental Shadows and Fog. It has the sweetness of Everybody Says I Love You rather than the slightly bitter tang of, say, Deconstructing Harry, never mind the tragic overtones of Crimes and Misdemeanors.
YET THERE IS SOMETHING IN A MINOR ALLEN MOVIE THAT APPEALS MORE THAN MANY A MAJOR MOVIE BY SOMEONE ELSE, LET ALONE THE KIND OF BLOATED, SENTENTIOUS HOKUM THAT MAKES FOR AN ALLEGEDLY MAJOR MOVIE SUCH AS THE GREEN MILE (UNBELIEVABLY, AN OSCAR CONTENDER). LIKE A GREAT JAZZMAN, ALLEN’S INSTRUMENT HAS BECOME PART OF HIMSELF, AND THE MUSIC FLOWS THROUGH HIM AS THOUGH HE WERE MERELY ITS MEDIUM INSTEAD OF ITS CREATOR; LIKE A GREAT BAND THAT HAS BEEN PLAYING TOGETHER FOREVER, HE IS BOTH SORT OF LOOSE AND SORT OF TIGHT AT THE SAME TIME. HIT IT!