Whatever Works (2009)

At the beginning and end of the movie, Boris Yellnikoff, the most recent embodiment of the Allen hero, looks helplessly at the camera and waxes his laissez faire philosophy: Whatever works. And it holds true. Whatever you can cling to in this fucked up universe, take it. The cliches about love and success are exactly that, cliches. We take whatever we can get because we can feel the infinity of chances disappearing into the night. The absurdity of true love is a tagline for a Hallmark card.

At least, according to the painful pessimism of Boris, a man who gave up on aspirations strictly so he could speak down to them. I think he would have preferred the "possible Nobel nomination" rather than winning it himself. It's fun to make excuses when they're not really there to begin with.

Have you ever seen Woody Allen speak in interviews? He sounds nothing like his writing. He, himself, comes off as extremely serious and articulate. He doesn't stammer or yell or constantly self-deprecate himself. You can detect the artist within him that wants to make a point. I'm amazed at how he takes the serious existential fears of life and reduces them to side jokes. The influence of Bergman is clearly there, and Allen is fast to pinpoint it. Like Tarantino, he wants you to see the reference. And then he spins it.

And Whatever Works does that quite nicely. It takes a sad story about a man who acts like Gollum, who has pushed everything away just so he can insult it, and tells a quaint love story that is too hard to believe. There's no way anyone can find his insulting nature attractive, but even Boris pinpoints this absurdity. So for a 16 year old beauty to fall in love with him, to defy virtually every odd, well...why not? The most touching scene involves Boris' realization of their luck. How did she get to him in the dark of the city streets? And not only that. Born decades before her, what magic allowed her to travel through time into the dark hours of the night and on his couch?

It's exactly this existential musing that attracts me so much to Woody. He finds the right cue for love because of its inexplicable nature. Its ability to confound us humbles us every time. But in this movie, I sensed a lackadaisical nature towards the great questions that often put the director to torment. For Allen, this is a fairy tale, and like every good fairy tale, there certainly exists "the horror! the horror!". But everything comes together nicely at the end. Relationships are lost, suicide is attempted, cheating, homosexuality, it's all there. But it's not serious, because to take love serious is murder. For humans to step out of their egocentric boxes and observe that this happens all the time, that love unites in the strangest places. One of the main themes is that the x-factor of Luck plays a massive part in love. We take what we can get. We ride the wave until another one comes along. Should we be mad at each other for this? Ehh, what's the point? The pendulum swings, entropy crashes in, and we find love through the shards of a broken window. Don't try to plot your life. Take the hits as they come. Smile. As Alvy would say, we need the eggs.