Cate Blanchcett anchors a strong cast that includes Sally Hawkins, Louis CK, Alec Baldwin, Andrew Dice Clay, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Stuhlbarg and Peter Sarsgaard.
Woody Allen (To Rome with Love) has never been a particularly timely filmmaker. The New York of his films seems to exist somewhat out of time and is populated with characters who are more concerned with the timeless — sex, relationships, psychology — than with current events.
His recent output, consisting mostly of fun but frothy European romances with names like Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Midnight in Paris, wouldn’t seem to suggest any growing concern with world affairs on Allen’s part; Midnight in Paris was explicitly about the desire to retreat into a sepia-toned past.
But every so often, Allen throws a curveball, which is how you end up with a movie like Blue Jasmine. While still easily recognizable as a Woody Allen movie — it features a jazz score, Windsor typeface credits and neurotic characters who talk about sex in gorgeously shot New York locales — it’s one of the few that indicates the man has actually cracked open a newspaper in the last 20 years.
This being one of Allen’s “dark” movies, more akin to Husbands and Wives or Interiors rather than Sleeper or Annie Hall, the titular Jasmine (Cate Blanchett, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey) is a scathingly unsympathetic protagonist.
The ex-wife of disgraced, Bernie Madoff-esque banker Hal (Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock), she profited by turning a blind eye to her husband’s crimes, living in idle luxury until the house of cards inevitably crumbled. The film opens after the crash, after the money has run dry, when Jasmine is forced to move in with her working-class sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins, All Is Bright) in San Francisco.
Most films would have Jasmine slowly pick up the pieces and rebuild a better, more honest life. There is some of that — she takes computer classes (no one in any Woody Allen movie knows how to use a computer; JavaScript might as well be Sanksrit to his characters) and works as a receptionist for a handsy dentist (Michael Stuhlbarg, Boardwalk Empire).
But this isn’t a redemption movie. This is a movie about a woman who has no idea what an honest life is, and probably wouldn’t want one if she did. Even simple work seems beyond her: After doing nothing more difficult than pilates for decades, she seems spoiled by the lap of luxury, unsure of how to take care of herself even in the most basic ways.
Together, Blanchett and Allen craft a scathing indictment of wealth, painting a picture of a woman who allows everyone around her to suffer for her own benefit and deals with any problems by simply ignoring them. Jasmine is an awful woman, but her story is surprisingly heartbreaking — Blanchett gives her a kind of nervous vulnerability that suggests she’s dimly aware that her life is teetering on the razor’s edge but doesn’t have a clue what else to do. She builds ornate palaces of lies for herself because she knows no other way of living.
She has moments of guilt — such as a heated run-in with her former brother-in-law Augie (a surprisingly good Andrew Dice Clay, Entourage), who lost his life savings in Hal’s scheme — but she drowns them in booze and pills — anything to not deal with the consequences of her actions.
Unlike Augie and Ginger, who have as many or more problems as Jasmine but persevere in spite of them (and who would have thought Andrew Dice Clay would ever be the moral compass of a Woody Allen movie?), Jasmine’s only solution is to look away. Look away, look away, look away. Look away from her husband’s affairs, his crimes and her own complicity. Look away until it all falls apart and then watch it burn. It is Allen’s best movie in years, maybe decades, and a career performance for Blanchett.
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