| Bilgi : There once was a time when Woody Allen films
were compared to the films of other directors. At first, he
outright spoofed the works of Antonioni and Eisenstein, and
then, as his artistic ambitions became more serious, he
emulated the works of Bergman and Fellini. But lately, the
primary reference point for Woody Allen films has been, well,
other Woody Allen films. And nowhere is that more evident than
in Scoop, a film that plays like a pastiche of several
of his other works.
Because it stars Scarlett Johansson as an
American who hobnobs with the British upper class,
Scoop most obviously invites comparisons with Match
Point—but where that film was deadly serious, this new
film is a light-spirited lark. And because Johansson plays a
journalism student who tries, in her own amateurish way, to
learn the identity of a mysterious serial murderer called the
Tarot Card Killer, this film is similar in spirit to one of
Allen's earlier trifles, Manhattan Murder Mystery.
Scarlett Johansson and Hugh Jackman in the
lead roles
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The comparisons certainly don't end there.
Like Broadway Danny Rose, the new film features Allen
himself as a character, in this case named Sid Waterman, who
qualifies his sometimes blunt criticisms of other people with
the words "and I say this with all due respect"; and also like
that earlier film, the new one begins with men sitting around
a table and reminiscing about one of their colleagues—in this
case, a journalist named Joe Strombel (Ian McShane) who
recently passed away.
Like Shadows and Fog, the new film
plays with the idea that we can cheat death, for at least a
little while, through the illusory power of magic. The first
time we see Joe, he is on a ferry with the Grim Reaper and
several other recently deceased people, crossing that dark
river into the underworld; one of Joe's fellow passengers
believes she was poisoned for discovering the Tarot Card
Killer's true identity, and Joe, never one to abandon a good
scoop, hops off the boat and swims back to our world—arriving
in a cabinet that is part of a magic trick performed by Sid
Waterman, who goes by the name "The Great Splendini" for his
stage-magician act.
Jackman, Johansson, and director Woody
Allen, who plays a role
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Like the cabinet in Oedipus Wrecks,
Woody Allen's contribution to the anthology New York
Stories, the magic cabinet in this film is supposed to
make people disappear and reappear, and the old-school magic
is combined with an oddly modern reference to the "molecules"
of the people who step inside. And like the cabinet in that
other film, the cabinet in this one isn't supposed to
really work—it's all just a trick, after all—and yet
something supernatural does happen. Johansson's character,
Sondra Pransky, just happens to be the audience member who has
stepped inside the cabinet before Joe appears there, so he
assumes she's a journalist and urgently passes on his tip.
Before fading back into the afterlife, he tells her the Tarot
Card Killer is probably one Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), the
son of a British lord.
Sondra doesn't know quite what to do with
this information, and since she met Joe inside Sid's cabinet,
she persuades Sid to join her in solving this mystery. Her
friends (Sondra is staying with some wealthy British
acquaintances) tell her that Peter likes to swim at a certain
club, so she and Sid go there, and she pretends to drown to
get Peter's attention. Her scheme works, and immediately after
"rescuing" her, Peter invites her to his estate, and she
accepts, though she does not tell him her real name; she also
tells him that Sid is her father. Those who remember how Allen
used to cast himself as the love interest for much younger
women will appreciate this change of pace, though even here,
Allen doesn't quite seem to be acting his age; at 70, he could
easily be the grandfather of the 21-year-old
Johansson.
Ian McShane as U.K. journalist Joe
Strombel
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What follows is an amusing mix of skulking
around, as Sondra and Sid look for clues that might link Peter
to the Tarot Card murders, and romantic comedy, as Sondra
realizes that she is falling for the very dashing and engaging
Peter. Allen also indulges his usual shtick—and in a more
pointed fashion than usual, playing up Jewish stereotypes
against the snootiness of the Brits and leaving you wondering
if he's critiquing the biases of the social elite and thus
resisting being one of them, critiquing his own people as a
way of fitting in with the social elite, or both.
"Shtick," by the way, is the best word for
this film. Scoop is reminiscent of several of Woody
Allen's films, but in a strange way, it harks back to films
that were neither great nor lousy—and like those films, it is
an enjoyable diversion, at least for those who are already
fans of the Woodman. Some critics have complained that
Scoop squanders the goodwill that Allen earned with the
oh-so-serious Match Point, but I found that film
disappointing and even a bit pretentious, whereas Scoop
is exactly the sort of light fluff that it aspires to be. Or,
to play on the title, it goes down easy like a scoop of ice
cream, even if it's more like the soft stuff you get at
McDonald's and not like a good helping of Breyer's.
Scoop may not be as funny as Bullets over
Broadway, which for my money is the best live-action Allen
film of the post-Mia Farrow era, but it is also not as dull or
tedious as some of his other films. |
