Melinda and Melinda

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(c) AJMalouin 2006
(Ratings: 5 by Al and 10 by Caryl) (2005/USA. Directed by Woody Allen) (1 hour 40. Rated PG-13 for adult situations involving sexuality, and some substance material.)

Woody Allen’s filmmaking career has run the gamete from Keaton (not *that* Keaton!) to Kierkegaard, and from sex to death. (Okay, permaybe that’s TWO gametes, but wherever gametes gambol, Woody grumbles.) Starting out with comedy-writer topics like “Bananas,” Allen has gradually graduated to the point where he looks the camera in the eye and asks the Big Questions. Usually the Big Question is “Did I just burp…or am I having a heart attack?” but the questions always skirt eternity in one way or another.

Here, in “Melinda and Melinda,” the Big Question is “Is Life a comedy or a tragedy?” Normally, we’d just answer “Both!” and turn to something far more interesting. The quietness of the Golf Channel, for instance. When Allen asks a question, however, we invariably pay attention, because we know we’re going to get another visual tour of Manhattan, The Greatest City On Earth. Allen’s cameras love Manhattan like a bulldog loves his Cheetos. If we also have to watch alllll of Allen’s characters rending their garments in order to see Manhattan, well, it’s a small price to pay. (1 hour, 40 minutes)

“Is Life comic, or is Life tragic?” The question is set up rather clumsily by two writers (hence the clumsiness) dining with others in a bistro. One writer takes the comic point of view, and the other takes the tragic. They each then tell the story of Melinda, played enchantingly in both episodes by Radha Mitchell.

In one episode Melinda has a tragic NYC love affair and ends up needing psychic restraint. In the other, Melinda improbably ends up happily with Hobie, a character played by Will Ferrell.

Caryl and Al both felt that the film is edited in such a way that the two separate stories get mixed together a little too often. Likewise, the edit several times returns us unexpectedly to the restaurant table from which the two stories were launched. Ultimately, however, we don’t care. We just enjoy the ride.

Throughout the film, the interiors and exteriors of the greatest city on earth receive the usual Allen homage.

Throughout the film, also, the characters, each and every one of them, exude the usual Allen neuroses. Allen himself is not in the film but several of the characters deliver monologues sooooo Allenesque that we can literally see Allen sucking his chest in and beating it while the characters speak.

Allen’s encyclopedic knowledge of and love of music also sings out through the entire film. There are a couple of piano-jazzy things that stick out a little TOO far but his use of classical music is mood-on in most scenes.

“Is Life a comedy or a tragedy??” The question doesn’t get definitely answered in the film but the journey is, as with Woody Allen, well worth taking.

(We saw the film with a noisy little old lady in front of us—but that’s another story, for another time. You will probably be luckier.)

“Melinda and Melinda” also stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Johnny Lee Miller, Amanda Peet, Chole Sevigny and Wallace Shawn (!), among others. Cinematography is by Vilmas Zsigmond, and his coverage is flawless, whether it involves Allen’s characters taking the stairs or taking the bait.
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(1) Zsigmond also shot “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” … “The Deer Hunter” … “The Long Goodbye” and “McCabe and Mrs. Miller.”