The Cold, Harsh Landscape of "Nebraska" (the movie, not the state)

The stark and stoic film Nebraska sees the elderly Woody Grant insisting on making his way from Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska as he looks to collect the million dollar sweepstakes prize he is convinced he has won. Shot in black and white, the movie meditates on aging, powerlessness and the kind of legacy we leave behind, specifically by one father to his son, and more generally by one generation of a nation to the next.

Bruce Dern is excellent as the father of deteriorating faculties. Will Forte, whose previous works include the hard-hitting MacGruber movie based on the SNL skit, plays his son David with subtlety and pathos as he decides to humor his distant father’s whim while taking the opportunity to spend some time with him. On the road they end up staying with extended family in Hawthorne, Neb. This family’s silence and inertia are just stifling. That is, until they catch wind of Woody’s delusional prize winnings, and they believe it too.

Director Alexander Payne (Sideways, The Descendants) is a master of capturing the innate humor of physical movement. Each movie of his that I have seen have been centered on a man living in quiet desperation, who at some point breaks out into a run, or at least an energetic walk. You really can’t get a better visual for quiet desperation than Hawthorne, Neb., in the snow, in black and white. Payne captures that feeling perfectly.

If nothing else, Woody and his wife Kate might make you thankful for your own parents, as they are a shrill and argumentative couple. But the characters don’t stay stuck in a one-note rut; each one is rounded out with continuing glimpses into their motivations and strengths. They are also surprisingly vulgar sometimes, which seems to be the modern elderly stereotype.

I'll also give Payne props for casting a very normal woman to play David's possibly ex-girlfriend, Noelle. In fact, most of the people are very normal looking, to the point where some of the minor characters are actually just people from the town of Hawthorne.

The Great Plains do not always come off well, characterized by dying small towns and populated by the aging and the adolescent. Shooting in black and white keeps any hint of fertility and life at bay. However, there is a note of hope as father and sons become closer and family draw strength from each other. Each camera angle is a work of art, and quirky humor adds to the story. Bob Odenkirk has a small but effective role as David’s older brother, Ross.

At dinner after the movie, my husband and I spent a lot of time discussing the different characters, what they were really after, what the movie was trying to say. So, while I found the movie to be bleak and somewhat depressing, I appreciated that it offered us plenty to talk about.

Philomena: Guilt and Grace at the Movies

Philomena Lee, played by Judi Dench, had a child when she was a naïve teenager who had never had reproduction explained to her. She gave birth at the convent she’d been sent to, and her son was put up for adoption as part of the deal. Fifty years later she still thinks of him constantly and wonders if he ever thinks of her.

Enter Martin Sixsmith, a former BBC reporter who took the fall for a scandal, though he wasn’t at fault. Martin agrees to help Philomena track down her son.

Martin is a jaded, worldly guy who is condescending about the beliefs and ideas of the older woman he is helping. He is writing Philomena’s situation as a human-interest story as a way to get back into reporting. He is angry about what happened to him, and his general bitterness only becomes more inflamed by Philomena’s story.

Philomena, on the other hand, has no axe to grind, in spite of the suffering she endured at the hands of the nuns in her youth. She just wants to know her son.

These two travel together (in reality they just talked on the phone a lot, but that’s hard to turn into a movie) following up leads. Philomena struggles with her own guilt over her son, while Martin is utterly annoyed that she could be feeling guilty when he sees all of this as the fault of the Catholic church.

His atheism and her devout Catholicism make for an interesting combination as he seeks retribution while she espouses forgiveness.

I really loved this movie and it has stayed in my mind. Judi Dench is fabulous, as is to be expected, and Steve Coogan portrays Martin with a great blend of coldness and undesired compassion. The movie asks hard questions about faith and forgiveness, but it leaves room for redemption and grace.

 

Deglamming the Big D in "Dallas Buyers Club"

So. Dallas Buyers Club. I’ve been trying to organize my thoughts about this movie for a week now, but I can’t seem to come to a cohesive take on it. This may come out as a rather disjointed review, but here goes.

First off, what is it? Matthew McConaughey plays Ron Woodroof, a blue collar, womanizing cowboy from the Dallas area who unexpectedly finds out that he is very ill, and that, in fact, he has AIDS. After just a few minutes of watching the movie, it does not seem all that shocking to viewers, because he is appears to be having a lot of very casual sex (and be prepared to see it in action), not to mention a lot of drugs and drinking. But he is surprised, because it’s 1985, and straight white guys don’t think that the AIDS epidemic has anything to do with them, no matter how depraved their lifestyles may be.

From the moment he wakes up in the hospital, we are reminded of what it was like in the early days of AIDS. The doctors wear gloves and masks, and they keep a bit of a distance as they rather coldly tell this man that he has about 30 days to live. His friends turn on him, and he becomes an outcast.

In the next bed is a transgendered man, living as a woman, named Rayon. (Side note: At one point Rayon is wearing the very rabbit fur coat that I coveted from my 8th-grade classmates. Just thought you should know.) Rayon is also an AIDS patient, and he reaches out in a friendly way to Ron, a friendliness that Ron is utterly unable to accept. Eventually these two become business partners in the Dallas Buyers Club, a backroom organization that brings in unapproved drugs for those who can’t acquire or tolerate the AZT that is being tested in the Dallas hospital.

Matthew McConaughey is on fire this year. And in this movie, he is also unrecognizable. As is Jared Leto, who looks a far cry from Claire Danes’ dreamy crush on “My So-Called Life.” Both are fantastic in their roles, going far beyond the change of look for each of them. A friend asked me if Matthew managed to be unattractive, and I had to respond that I honestly found him unappealing in every way. But then, ropers never were my thing. There was one scene where he smiled, and I thought, “Oh yeah, those are his teeth.” Other than that, yup, he achieved unattractive very well.

An effective aspect of this movie is that I don’t necessarily like either Ron or Rayon. I sort of expected that the Ron Woodroof character would not look too good, but I wondered if Rayon’s character would be played up to martyrdom in an effort to promote tolerance. I don’t like it when any character is sainted too much to believe. This was not an issue at all. Each of them definitely showed weakness and brokenness, though Rayon is certainly a more sympathetic character than Ron.

I actually like the movie more for not making the main characters overly likeable, because it reinforces the fact that we don’t reserve love only for those people who we like or who have it together or who live the way we think they should. And these two do not become saints—they continue on in their respective habits and weaknesses. These are people living on the margins of life, albeit completely opposite margins.

Jennifer Garner plays a doctor who shows more heart than the rest, and I felt a bit like she was a glimpse of Jesus in the midst of it all. Compassionate, caring for each person as an individual in spite of the stigma of the disease and in spite of the fact that they were extremely different from herself, she walked the journey with her patients. Those patients were most definitely the modern version of the lepers that Jesus touched, cared for, and healed.

Part of my interest in this movie was that I lived in the Dallas area in the 80s, and I wondered what the movie’s perspective would be. I was a bit nervous that the church would come off very badly, as many conservatives shouted down AIDS victims as people receiving the just rewards of their sins. Actually, the church has very little presence in the movie at all. That might not reflect so well on the church either, but at least we didn’t get bashed.

And maybe we should been. One church that I know of was offering classes on the rather large gay population in Dallas. I’m not sure if the intention was informational or to offer ideas on how to evangelize. As an early teen, I read through the photocopied study guide, and if there was anything spiritual it was lost on me. What I got was an eye-opening account of what was purported to happen in gay bars and bedrooms, and the purpose of including all of that could only have been to raise fear in the conservative Christian mind. If I were gay I might feel the same way about straight people if someone presented a handbook to me that detailed all the perversities that a certain segment of straight people engage in at bars or behind closed doors.

Beyond my curiosity about how Dallas in general, and “my people” there in particular, might be portrayed, there is another reason I wanted to see it. In January of 1982, I was 13 and going through my second of three major hip operations. At home after surgery, I started having agonizing pain in one leg and I was brought to the hospital by ambulance. I had internal bleeding and had lost a lot of blood. The doctor told my parents afterward that I really had needed a transfusion, but they had decided not to do it. He sort of hesitated, and then he didn’t really explain that any further.

Over the next year, we started to hear more about AIDS. It wasn’t until 1986 that all blood in the U.S. was tested for HIV, and one study says that by then 60% of America’s 20,000 hemophiliacs were infected from transfusions. If I had gotten that transfusion, I could very well have suffered the way that young Ryan White did, being barred from his school, threatened, and avoided. It was very early in the epidemic, and people were just terrified. So it hits close to home, knowing that I could easily have joined the ranks of the victims.

Dallas Buyers Club is a very gritty movie that traces the arc of a man from fearful hate to tolerance and compassion. But for me, all three of the main characters demonstrate in one way or another the kind of love we need, and often fail, to show—a love that comes not from our regard for an individual’s achievements or moral compass, but a love that stems from valuing each person as a beloved creation, formed in our Father’s image.

"Frozen" Offers Warm Holiday Fun

The new Disney offering, Frozen, will not leave you cold, unless you are very coldhearted indeed. Yes, this is yet another princess story of two beautiful, tiny-waisted, enormous-eyed princesses whose parents, alas, have gone the way of most Disney parents. Disney parents have a notoriously high mortality rate. And there is a handsome prince, and true love, and a faithful reindeer, and a goofy snowman sidekick.

Yet, in spite of those clichés, Frozen delivers a funny, beautifully animated story with lively music, and it even addresses some higher-minded issues.

Elsa, the older of the two princesses, has the power to make snow and ice. She doesn’t have a lot of control over it, and fear makes her dangerous. Her parents keep her away from others and teach her one basic life lesson: Conceal. Don’t feel.

When they pass on, Elsa is left to the throne with no experience outside of the castle. She gets upset after the coronation, loses control, and the kingdom is covered in ice. Then she flees to the mountains where she can be free to be herself.

Her younger sister Anna, the less graceful, more naïve sister, is really the main character, as she sets off on a quest to bring her sister back to the kingdom to make things right. Anna’s job is to convince Elsa that it is possible to be herself and still come back home.

I appreciated the storyline because I see a lot of young women (and some older ones too) who are working so hard to preserve a perfect image of themselves, unable to allow for weakness or vulnerability. Elsa’s desire to present the perfect queen, the good girl, leads to anger and fear and unleashes terrible consequences. As a Facebook and Twitter user, I know the temptation to present myself as someone other than who I really am, and it’s a temptation we all face—possibly more in the church than anywhere else, which is exactly the opposite of what we are called to do.

So I found it both entertaining and somewhat meaningful, and I had a certain 14-year-old next to me who also enjoyed it very much. The animation is amazing—made me want to build my very own ice palace, and I’m always cold!

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Last Friday I went to see The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. A female blood relative of mine, who is not my mother or daughter, joined me. She even kindly stopped at my house and picked me up. About halfway there, it became clear to us both that she was not sure what we were going to see.

She thought she was going to see Dallas Buyers’ Club. Not that she really cared, she just wanted to go to a Friday movie with me. I spent the rest of the drive explaining the Hunger Games book series and what happened in the first movie. Coming in cold, I wondered what she would think of it.

I, on the other hand, was rather a fan of The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. I was worried about how the books would translate to film, since the point of the violence in the book is to point out how horrible violence really is, and how much it affects those who are victims or participants in it. I didn’t want the audience to be one more spectator entertained by the horror. For the most part, I think the movies have held to that perspective, which I appreciate.

If you liked the first movie, you will love the second. Jennifer Lawrence is still the perfect Katniss, and the movie adheres to the themes of the book very closely. The bizarre excess of citizens in the Capital is a jarring foil for the poverty and hunger in the outer districts. Katniss’s development from a falsely loveable tribute into a national symbol for revolution is mostly believable, and she retains the taciturn, fiercely private nature that is introduced in the beginning of the series.

While it’s great to see that Katniss is a strong woman, it is also refreshing that the strong hero of a movie is beset with uncertainty, not as bold and brave as everyone believes, and dependent upon other people to point out to her what she can’t see herself. She is no shrinking violet, but she has her own weaknesses, which makes her a much more real character.

Josh Hutcherson does a fine job as the gentle, pining Peeta; my daughter and I were Team Gale throughout the first two books, and Liam Hemsworth as Gale just serves to reinforce that loyalty. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the new Gamemaker, Plutarch. He must have been a major score for the casting department, and he’s the perfect choice. He is a natural at roles that leave viewers ambivalent, wondering whether he is a good guy or the incarnation of evil itself.

If my unnamed female relative, who is not my second sister, was uncertain about what she was getting into, in the end she enjoyed the movie very much. There were a lot of gasps and caught breath going on in the seat next to me, and when the story concluded—as expected by fans of the book—inconclusively, she said “What? That’s it?” She’ll either be reading the books soon, or I can plan to see her at the showing of the third film.

Another friend joined us for the movie, and she had also been at my church book club the night before. At our meeting we were discussing Nothing to Envy, a book about life in North Korea. The people of this country are so oppressed, so subject to ideological brainwashing, and so abused. If you love anyone, you are subject to the threat of their punishment in response to your own disobedience, which makes it very difficult for anyone to rebel. It felt like I was watching the sci-fi version of North Korea.

But about that third film. I don’t know. I’m not sure I can handle the visual version of that story. But the draw to see Jennifer Lawrence reprise the role one more time may be more than I can resist. I highly recommend it with to those who are familiar with and ready the violent nature of the story. But I still won’t be letting my 10-year-old see it.

12 Years a Slave: A Harsh History Lesson

One of the first big cultural events I remember from my childhood, after the U.S. bicentennial celebration, was the airing of the miniseries “Roots” on television. Since I was 8 years old at the time it aired, I did not watch it, but it became a part of the cultural discussion around me for years to come. Though I still have not seen the whole series (why?!), I have a pretty good idea of how the narrative goes. A whole generation of young Americans got a fresh look at how horrible the legal slave trade in the United States really was.

12 Years a Slave  is sort of a “Roots” for the new generation, with the major difference being that “Roots” was based on a novel, while 12 Years is based on a real person’s story. While slavery has been addressed in other movie forms (Amistad, Django Unchained), 12 Years approaches it with more heart than Amistad and more earnestness than the stylized Django.

Director Steve McQueen (not that Steve McQueen; the actor has long since passed away) and screenwriter John Ridley have adapted the biography of 19^th-century American Solomon Northrup. Northrup, a free man living with his family in Saratoga Springs, NY, is offered a two week job in Washington D.C., but it's a trap. Under this ruse, he is taken captive and transported south, where he is sold as a slave.

Many scenes include brutally violent mistreatment of human beings—whippings, beatings, a near-hanging and rape. It is very difficult to watch. The horror, heightened by the fact that Mr. Northrup has always known freedom, is interspersed with gorgeous images of the natural south—Spanish moss curtaining golden light through the trees, swamps teeming with life, lovely plantation homes, even a glorious field of white cotton waiting to be harvested. Of course, these images are haunted by our knowledge of the travesty that undergirds the way of life there. Seeing this natural beauty through the eyes of a man living in fear and degradation brought home to me once again the myriad ways that we corrupt the creation which God intended for delight.

And then there is God’s written Word, which is also corrupted by slaveowners for their own purposes.

The first slaveowner, played by the ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch, seems to feel he’s doing his best, trying to stay on a high moral ground in spite of the messy matter of owning slaves. He’s the “nice” slaveowner, the one who feels he is treating his slaves well, the one who stages Sunday services for them on his plantation. He stands reading Scripture in his lovely garden as the slaves sit, a truly captive audience that includes a grieving mother who has been separated from her children by his purchase.

Another, more vile slaveowner, played by McQueen’s favorite actor Michael Fassbender, reads to his slaves as well. He reads this (in a different translation): “The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows.” That verse from Luke 12, in context, is a difficult enough passage, but when snatched away from surrounding verses, it is a cruel power the master lords over his slaves.

On the other hand, Northrup finds some solace in singing spirituals on the death of a fellow slave, showing the way that the spiritual life of slaves gave them hope for the future, in the next life if not here on earth.

McQueen ably portrays the complete loss of dignity and the inhumanity that Northrup and other slaves suffer. Chiwetel Ejiofor is amazing in the roll of Solomon Northrup, as is Lupita Nyong'o's portrayal of another slave named Patsey; all of the acting is excellent. The cinematography is stunning. And there are some unusually long pauses in the action that leave us suspended in time (and sometimes in horror) in a way that helps us enter into the character’s feeling of being powerless to leave a horrible situation.

My initial reaction to it was a mixture of being deeply affected (and brutalized, as the director must have hoped) by the story, and at the same time feeling that there were no surprises. I have seen these characters before, though more often in books than in movies. That is in part due, as a friend explained to me, that Northrup's story was published in the same time period as a number of slave narratives, and many were written as part of the abolitionist movement's campaign. A George Mason University website has an article about why this story is a little different and considered more reliable than most.

But perhaps it is time for a new generation to look closely and deeply into the terrible history of slavery in our country. We cannot face present problems without looking at the way we came to them, and ignorance of our past systemic inhumanity will serve to continue misunderstanding and hate. If you want to take the next step, read about what happened after slavery was officially ended and the subsequent struggles faced by freed slaves and their descendants in the book The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. Our collective past sins affect many generations, including the current one.

And our uncanny ability to justify our sin, with or without the misuse of God's Word, is a trap every one of us should be watching for.

All is Lost; or, The (Awesome) Old(ish) Man and the Sea

Robert Redford, it’s good to see you again. After a lot of dreamy sighing over midnight slumber-party screenings of The Way We Were in middle school, not to mention school-sanctioned swooning when my history teacher showed us All the President’s Men, Redford was at the top of my list of favorite actors. Well, yes, he’s aged a bit since then, but he still commands the screen in a way few actors can.

And that’s why All is Lost is worth watching. I don’t think it’s for everyone. This is a small movie—small focus, small budget—and we never even learn the only character’s name. As a matter of fact, we know nothing about his life before his sailing yacht is damaged in the middle of the ocean. Even after watching the whole movie, we know very little about him.

One thing we do know is that he is very resourceful. He would give MacGyver a run for his money, rigging up fixes to different problems. Though I’m pretty sure that if the Professor had had the limited but important resources Redford’s character digs up from his boat, Gilligan and company would only have been on the island for a couple of hours. But then there would never have been a musical Ginger/Gilligan version of "Hamlet," and my knowledge of classical music would be even sadder than it already is. So good thing the Professor only had those coconuts.

But back to the movie. At first I wondered how this was going to stretch into a full-fledged feature. But the movie keeps upping the ante, and we were riveted much of the time. My movie-friend-of-the-week mentioned that Redford is 77 years old, and that her dad of similar age wouldn’t last 10 minutes into this story. I’m not sure I would last 10 minutes into this story. Like watching a horror movie where you keep willing the person to NOT answer the phone, or go into the woods, or whatever, I found myself thinking “DON’T go on the deck! Stay in the cabin and keep the door closed!” But he just doesn’t listen to me.

We don’t know a lot about what he’s thinking either. This seems like the most unrealistic thing to me. Set aside the fact that he somehow patches a massive hole in the boat with glue and a paintbrush; set aside the important papers and book that mysteriously stay dry throughout; set aside the fact that he is 77 and getting beaten up and thrown around and still climbs up the mast. The most unrealistic thing to me is that he never talks to himself, aside from a choice and perfectly understandable curse. As someone who constantly finds myself speaking to no one in particular (too much time alone each day), I find it hard to believe he wouldn’t be narrating things to his invisible dog or something.

The man-vs-nature movie could serve as an allegory for any hardship that a person comes up against; I immediately thought of something like a terminal illness. First you have lots of resources, and you feel like you can overcome this. Then your supply of resources begin to narrow, and your attitude changes.

The ending, while a noble idea, seems a little cheesy in implementation and will likely disappoint many viewers. I don’t think I’m spoiling the movie by saying that.

This may not be a movie for everyone. But if you think it might be a movie for you, I’d recommend seeing it in the theater, because it’s hard to imagine having the same reaction to the suspense if you are watching this on your TV at home.

In the end, like I said at the beginning, the real reason to watch it is Robert Redford. While there are aspects of the movie that I admired very much, if you put, say, Nicolas Cage in this film, it would be a joke. There’s just something about Redford that makes it all more powerful.

 

A New British Rom Com? It's "About Time".

Before I went into the screening of the romantic comedy About Time, I stood in line for my free popcorn (Big Screen Club membership has its privileges, as does frequent movie attendance). The man ahead of me in line was in full biker gear—leather jacket, leather pants, bandana tied around his long brown hair. I might add that he smelled very good—brought me back to high school when all the Yuppie businessmen would come into the dry cleaners where I worked with their power suits, starched shirts and high-end cologne. But I digress.

I spent a moment or two debating what movie he was there for—Thor? Captain Phillips? Something manly for certain. And then, as I sat in the theater waiting for the previews to begin, he entered to sit by himself. I totally did not see that coming. Audiences often match the movie—at Short Term 12, there were several men in their mid 20s to mid 30s. Captain Phillips was populated by many older viewers, a few sporting baseball caps of their favorite armed services. I’m often the one who doesn’t fit whichever formula the movie calls for, so it shouldn’t surprise me when someone else breaks the mold!

Luckily for my husband, a friend showed up to watch with me and saved me from throwing myself at my fine-smelling biker friend who likes romantic comedies.

So, about that movie. About Time is from Richard Curtis, the writer/director of Love Actually, which is one of the reasons I wanted to see it. Romance, humor, schmaltz. I like it.

About Time is not as schmaltzy as Love Actually. It’s also a tad less funny and romantic. There is a similar spattering of odd characters, but this story sticks to the same characters instead of jumping from story to story.

On the occasion of his 21^st birthday, Tim’s father (played by the always funny Bill Nighy) tells him that the men in his family can time travel. They can’t go any further than their own lives, and they can’t go into the future, so they won’t be saving JFK or stopping Hitler. Of course Tim doesn’t believe his father, but he gives it a try and finds out it’s true.

Predictably, he tries to use this to his romantic advantage, first with a friend of his sister, and later with a more serious relationship, rewinding to take another stab at first impressions. My companion and I agreed that we would never get past the first week, constantly second guessing everything we’d said and done, trying to make it perfect. And you can’t help but wonder what we learn from the mistakes we make and the consequences of them. If we never had to live with the consequences, would we really learn and make emotional progress?

Eventually, Tim wants to use his powers for more serious issues. For a while I felt like the movie was meandering. I couldn’t figure out where it was going. But I found the last third of the movie wholly satisfying as it made its point, as you may have guessed, about time, and our uses of it. While we don't all get to relive our favorite moments, we can be looking for the beauty of it all while we can. 

You can probably wait for this to come out on DVD; you won’t lose anything in the translation to the smaller screen. And, like Love Actually, it’s not for family movie night, since the young man’s romantic escapades could make for some awkward moments.

If you do go see it at the theater, and you are of the more emotional persuasion, bring some Kleenex and possibly some dark glasses.

 

Cate Blanchett Blossoms in "Blue Jasmine"

Today I finally made it to "Blue Jasmine," the Woody Allen film about a woman whose life has completely come undone. Cate Blanchett plays Jasmine, the wife of a Bernie Madoff-type in the form of a perfectly cast Alec Baldwin. The card house has imploded, she's lost everything. Jasmine does the only thing she can think of: She flees New York to stay with her estranged sister, Ginger. Ginger and Jasmine were both adopted, and they couldn't be more different.

In flashbacks to her old life, we learn that Jasmine moved easily in the world of extreme wealth that her marriage offered her. In the present, people question whether Jasmine knew what kind of schemes her husband had been involved in, how much of the guilt could be laid on her.

Jasmine is not a likeable person. She is arrogant, she feels she deserves special status, and she is coming unglued. Due to her breakdown, she spends a lot of time talking to the air. She seems to feel that commonplace jobs are below her, though she takes a receptionist job she doesn't want. It's hard to understand why she didn't just go work at a high-end clothing store, but that's neither here nor there. She's condescending to her sister and dismissive of her sister's fiancé.

But Cate Blanchett is, as always, utterly fascinating to watch, and somehow she, the script, and Allen's directing conspire to make us feel empathy for her anyway, mostly by making her a victim. This doesn't really play well to a modern feminist sensibility--we don't want women to be considered to all be possible victims of a man's power. There is a sort of Jane Austen-ish dependence on a man to pull a woman out of her prescribed circumstances that I find irritating, yet it may just be true sometimes. Which is funny, because in her more anxious moments, Jasmine sounds like a manic Katherine Hepburn, who is the antithesis of a victim. And maybe even more irritatingly, I couldn't help but think how beautifully dressed she was, which goes completely against the whole point of the movie showing how shallow she really is.

Perhaps I'm too biased in Blanchett's favor to be objective here. After all, she's about my age and height, she's at least as pale as I am, and I'm prone to talking to the air quite a bit myself.

Ginger, a working-class woman who suffers financially in part due to her former brother-in-law's unethical activities, is played by Sally Hawkins. If you don't know Hawkins, you can't help but fall in love with for her performance in the quirky movie from a few years ago, "Happy-Go-Lucky."

I had seen critique of the movie in advance that mentioned Woody Allen's inability to portray working-class people beyond stereotypes. In spite of Hawkins' great performance, and a good turn by Bobby Cannavale as Ginger's fiancé Chili, they are still portrayed as rather unintelligent people, warm-hearted and well-intentioned as they may be. With some seriously bad hair. Certainly they still come off as more generous than Jasmine herself. But it's true that Allen has shortcomings in this area.

If you're into such things, it's fun to look at some of the casting choices. Ginger's ex-husband is played by Andrew Dice Clay, the misogynist comic popular in the 90s. And another 90s throwback is Doogie Howser's best friend Vinnie, also known as Max Casella, who plays Chili's buddy Eddie. Somehow I feel like all of the working-class people sound like they're from the Jersey Shore, even though this is all supposed to take place in San Francisco. I'm from Michigan, what do I know.

The film is interesting and complex, but it's also a downer. Don't go into it looking for something escapist and fun, like Allen's last outing, "Midnight in Paris." But if you are interested in great acting, go to see Blanchett and Hawkins.