Fantastic!

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

... and that's the mark of geniuses.Now seriously, how come I never heard about Emmett Ray? I might not be a 'jazz aficionado', not 'Woody Allen' level anyway, but I humbly believe I would be aware of the existence of the second best guitar-player in the world… after Django Reinhart (the film's running-gag). But then again, I gave "Sweet and Lowdown", Allen's half-drama half-documentary musical biopic, the benefit of the doubt, after all, if I was familiar with Django yet incapable to tell you the name of one of his titles, it was all the more plausible not to be familiar with the second best.So, I started the film and I was immediately hooked by Emmett, the character, here's a guy whose eccentricity is displayed before his talent. He's played by Sean Penn using his whiny worn-out voice of the guy who doesn't try to disguise his lack of huskiness, he's got the most original haircut, the most stylish suit, he's a womanizer, even a bit of pimp, and while everyone's waiting for his performance, he's playing pool, having a few drinks and talk with one of his protegees. Call it the 'Amadeus' syndrome but his eccentricity is so flashily displayed that there's no way to believe this guy isn't talented. So he meets the public and starts playing and although I'm no expert, I thought I slightly recognized the first theme he played, which seems to have been borrowed from a very popular French ballad.That should have given me a hint, but no, as the plot advanced, no matter how weird things got, I didn't see it coming, Emmett was too original not to be real. So I believed the story about the moon, I believed that he met a mute girl and lived perhaps his longest and sweetest romance before getting back to his old habits and dumping her. I believed the love story with the wannabe writer, the marriage, the adultery with a bodyguard and it's not until the final act, that I had enough of bizarreness, I had to check. Because I have a bad habit, before watching a biopic, I like to check the basic details, you know birth year, death, the 'how' and 'why' etc.I wanted to pause the movie and see when Emmett Ray died, was it in the 30's so I might expect some depression, suicide or assassination or what? So, I google his name and found out he was a fictional character, I couldn't believe it. I didn't even suspect that after "Zelig", Woody Allen would strike again in a jazz-related documentary. I swallowed everything, I mean you have Woody Allen talking passionately about his kind of music and many jazz experts debating on the veracity of some details, and come on, the second best guitar player after Django. It's all fake… but I guess I'm too stubborn to accept it..Woody Allen makes a "Spinal Tap" like film, and while the jazz player doesn't exist, jazz does, the Great Depression did, these kinds of people too, and these fans of jazz, you better believe they're tangible. So why not exploring the heritage of jazz and reinvent a world that would feel like a kaleidoscope of the environment that made a music like jazz the only possible enjoyable one. By choosing a fictional character, Allen allowed him to be grander and more original and appealing more than any real jazz-man. Emmett Ray knows how to get women but not to keep them, he has no social skills, no sense of commitment or of money but his talent is all he's got and when he doesn't play his guitar, he's regressing. This is how music is important to him. It's all about the music.And it's also very fitting that the girl he loved was mute but not deaf, she has an access to his talent, she knows what she loves in him and she allows him to be natural but she can't step on his territory, he has a freedom of total expression, and leaves her when his heart is being progressively tamed. He's an artist, so wrapped up in his conviction to be an artist that he can't afford to live a normal life. It's like the musician inspiring Allen and Allen inspiring the musician, a sort of Jekyll and Hyde duality. And both Sean Penn and Samantha Morton are excellent in their respective performances showcasing the natural harmony between the zany yin of a lunatic doofus and the quiet and benevolent yang of a patient understanding women. We love Emmett through Hattie and despite Emmett. And because such a sweet gal like Hattie loved him, we give him the benefit of the doubt.The second relationship should have told me something wasn't right, Uma Thurman played Blanche, the writer whose goal is to write about men with fascinating occupations, and she's so different from Hattie that Emmett keeps her like an obvious trophy-wife and if there's ever one thing Emmett cherishes more than his guitar, it's his ego, so it's all come naturally until she finally cheats on him looking for a wilder escapism with one of Emeett's boss bodyguards. I guess Allen went overboard at the end so that the only idiots who didn't know it was fictional could finally realize they were played with… but this part had the merit to have a funny punch-line, one that couldn't do without a cameo of Django Reinhart.Emmett then vanishes after a few hit records, and there's nothing left about him, but who knows maybe there were many Emmett-likes who wanted to be the next Django, we can't be sure that such a larger-than-life never existed and Woody Allen's false tribute to a fictional jazz player becomes the magnificent tribute of a real art.

Sweet and Lowdown (1999)Besides the funny idea of creating a musician who never existed and having talking heads of real experts to support the idea (done better in Zelig and, more parallel, The Rutles), there is very little happening there to keep the movie going. There are a few funny lines, for sure, but many more that are either reused Allen quips or just flat comebacks. At first Sean Penn seems perfect for his role, and he fortunately plays his part no imitating Allen. But either he has so little to work with or he plays this guitarist so superficially, it never takes off, we never feel for him or his situation. The fact that he "fades away" at the end of his career is something like the whole movie, which didn't quite form in the first place. Funny and clever the way Scoop is funny and clever--not too much.Samantha Morton puts in a great performance as a mute woman. And the music, a la Django, is unassailable.

The story is told about the now-defunct British humorous magazine "Punch" that, when someone complained to the editor that "Punch is not as funny as it used to be," he replied "It never was." The same could be said of Woody Allen. For years the received criticism of every new Woody film has been "Woody is not as funny as he used to be". He never was. Exactly when he was funny varies according to the particular tastes of the critic in question. Some will tell you that he has not been funny since "Hannah and Her Sisters", others that he has done nothing worthwhile since "Manhattan". There are probably even some purists who will insist that nothing in his later work can compare to early slapstick comedies like "Sleeper" or "Bananas".I myself have never been an adherent of the "Woody is not as funny as he used to be" school of thought, for two reasons. Firstly, not all his films from his supposed golden age in the seventies and eighties were equally good; several of the sketches in "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex….", for example, today come across as frankly embarrassing. Secondly, by no means all of his films from the 1990s and the 2000s are weak; he has made a number of good films during this period, of which "Sweet and Lowdown" is one of the best.In structure the film is a mock-documentary about Emmett Ray, a jazz guitarist from the 1930s. Ray is a fictitious character, although the spoof is so well done that it becomes entirely credible. (The day after I first saw this in the cinema I went to the library to check out what it said about him in an encyclopaedia of jazz. Needless to say, I did not find his entry). Scenes from Ray's life are intercut with shots of jazz experts, including Allen himself, being interviewed about Ray's music. To add to the idea that this is a non-fiction documentary, the various commentators give differing versions of anecdotes about Ray or differing interpretations of his life.Allen, of course, is well known for his love of jazz, and it would appear that he first conceived the ambition to make a film about a jazz musician in the early seventies, but this did not come to fruition until 1999. He originally planned to play the part of Emmet Ray himself, but unless he has a much wider range as an actor than he has hitherto shown it was a wise decision to cast Sean Penn rather than himself in the role, as Ray is far from being a typical Woody character. For a start, he is neither Jewish nor a New Yorker. Nor is he a nervous, angst-ridden, self-deprecating intellectual- indeed, he is far from being an intellectual at all. Great artists are not always great men, and for all his brilliance as a performer Ray is a deeply flawed individual- crude, boorish, an alcoholic and a kleptomaniac. Besides his music, he has a sideline as a ponce running a stable of prostitutes. His idea of a hobby is to go down to the local rubbish dump and shoot rats, even inviting his girlfriends to join him in this dubious sport. Obviously the last of the great romantics.Ray is also conceited about his talent, proclaiming himself to be the second best guitarist in the world after his idol Django Reinhardt (who was of course a real person). Ray's relationship to Reinhardt, whom he does not know personally, is a complicated mixture of jealousy and hero-worship; he adores Reinhardt's music, but also hopes to be able to better it. Ray's one redeeming quality is his passionate dedication to his art, and Penn (in an excellent performance) is able to suggest all the many facets of his personality and to make him someone who is not totally unsympathetic despite his many faults.The other really excellent performance is that of the young Samantha Morton as Ray's sweet, innocent girlfriend Hattie. Hattie is mute, which means that Morton could only express her character through gestures and facial expressions. It is a performance similar to that of Marlee Matlin as the deaf-mute heroine of "Children of a Lesser God", although with the difference that Hattie, although mute, is not deaf. Uma Thurman is also good as Ray's wife Blanche, an upper-class socialite who marries Ray out of what might be called "nostalgie de la boue". She is attracted to him precisely because he is crude and uncultured with dubious personal habits- they first meet when she catches him stealing an ornament at a party.There is plenty of humour in the film, much of it centred upon Ray's sense of self-importance, such as the slapstick sequence about his attempt to make a stage entrance seated on a wooden crescent moon lowered down from above. It is not, however, a pure comedy, but also a character study and a film about the power of music to transform even the most mundane of lives. I am by no means a great jazz buff, but I was enthralled by the beauty of the music in this film (performed by the guitarist Howard Alden). This is one of Woody's most impressive films from the last two decades. 8/10

Back in the 1920's and 30's, the fictitious Emmet Ray (Sean Penn) was a superlative guitarist, second only to the great Django Reinhardt. His rise to eventual fame, however, was rocky, due to his gigantic ego and eccentricities. Apart from drinking a bit too much and being a no-show at engagements he was committed to play, Emmet also believed in the love 'em and leave 'em philosophy. But, when Emmet felt the world closing in on him, he just headed off to the nearest dump to shoot rats or went to a railroad yard to watch the locomotives. One day, Emmet and a fellow musician court two ladies on a New Jersey boardwalk. After a flip of a coin, Emmet is saddled with Hattie (Samantha Morton) a mute laundress who can nevertheless hear. She soon becomes smitten with Emmet, so much so that even he can't help but bask in her never ceasing attention. After a gig ends, Emmet and Hattie head to Hollywood so Ray can pursue a career in movie soundtracks. But, over time, Emmet decides to dump Hattie, because as an artist, he can't have any permanent commitments. Eventually, a new woman, writer Blanche (Uma Thurman) enters his life and his career endures more ups and downs. But, has Emmet totally forgotten the sweet Hattie? This is a superlative film, with a great cast, story, and music. Woody Allen wrote this gem, of course, and it is very funny and tragic at the same time. Allen appears in the movie himself, as a commentator on the music of Emmet Ray. Penn, known more for his serious work, is a total delight as the self-centered but engaging guitarist. Just watch him try to land on stage from a giant swinging moon and you will laugh yourself silly. Morton, who garnered an Academy award nomination (as did Penn), has no dialogue but is wonderful and expressive as the sweet, faithful woman done wrong. The rest of the cast, including Thurman, Gretchen Mol, Anthony LaPaglia, and others, is fine, too. The look of the film, a re-creation of the twenties and thirties, sports excellent costumes, scenery, and amenities. Finally, the music is lovely, vibrant, and a pure pleasure to hear. If you have never tried an Allen flick, here is one on which to begin your pursuits. It will strum its way into your heart and soul, between huge peals of laughter.