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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
WHATEVER WORKS Boris Yellnikoff (Larry David), a true-blue grouse who was once a physics professor at Columbia and too smart (or just too crazy) to survive his marriage or his job—or, for that matter, a failed suicide attempt—tells us, the audience, about himself in the opening monologue. He hates most people, if only for their rampant stupidity, but he also despairs on a level that is tragic-comic. He lives alone and would be practically a shut-in if not for a few friends, who can barely suffer his ranting on the downfall of Western civilization and the eventual end of the universe. One night outside of Boris’s home, a teenaged Southern belle named Melody (Evan Rachel Wood), who has come up to New York City from Mississippi, begs him for a place to crash. While reluctant, Boris agrees, and soon Melody, one without a whole lot of brain power (or, as Boris describes her, “Faulkner by way of Benji”) grows on Boris as he becomes a kind of unintentional mentor for her—she picks up all of his intellectual talk (on string theory) and his general malaise. Boris becomes smitten, and they marry, much to the surprise of Melody’s mother (Patricia Clarkson) and eventually her divorced father (Ed Begley Jr.), who come up to New York to find her. Looking at Larry David in the trailer and on the poster for Woody Allen’s latest film—his 40th—the immediate assumption is that Allen is back to what he’s done several times in his career, which is to cast a version of himself in the lead as opposed to just taking on the role. And it’s more than understandable; David’s wonderful curmudgeon on his show Curb Your Enthusiasm, a near masterpiece of absurd and awkward improvised comedy, shares tendencies with Allen (not least of which is the typical but spot-on Jewish humor). And when one heard that David would be cast as the lead, playing a misanthrope who takes up an unlikely relationship with a much younger woman, it sounded like another Woody Allen repeat. The good news is that Larry David, perhaps for the first time, is playing a character that doesn’t feel like an exact copy of his Larry David on Curb (though some tendencies or inflections and mannerisms come close) nor that of the usual über-neurotic Woodman (though there are some similarities to be sure). Allen first wrote the script in the late 1970s for Zero Mostel, with whom Allen co-starred in The Front, but Mostel passed away before Allen could approach him. One can see why this script wasn’t filmed at the time—Allen had already made a movie like this, with the main character talking to the audience and expressing his views in narration throughout. That film, Annie Hall, cemented Allen’s reputation, but it also may have typecast him (if it weren’t already) and his personal brand of romantic comedy. Now, some 30 odd years later, Whatever Works comes off as vintage, inspired Woody Allen through and through. With a few minor alterations to the script (the occasional mention of Obama or the right wing), it gives a craving audience some of that biting, New York wit and narrative ingenuity that one found in Annie Hall or Bananas. It’s a triumph for Larry David, too, as he delivers on all of the beats of comedy, and even shows some signs of vulnerability in his scenes with wife/protégé Melody. He’s got perfect timing, but the big surprise is how well he adapts to Allen’s long takes of dialog (some of them are quite long) since his work on Curb was all improvised. Evan Rachel
Wood is, it must be said, a revelation. Not for her dramatic gifts, as
we’ve seen as recently as The Wrestler and as early as
Thirteen, but for her own sense of comic timing as an “ignoramus’ as
Boris describes her, who is impressionable and thoughtful and kind while
also co-opting practically all of Boris’s teachings. Ditto for Patricia
Clarkson as Melody’s Marietta, who opens up creatively as a photographer
in NYC, and Ed Begley Jr., who plays the stereotypical Bible-thumping
Southern gentleman.
Jack Gattanella
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