by Erin Hatch, Editor
There are so many thoughts rushing through Jasmine’s head that she can’t help but spout them out. She needs to voice her story, needs to say it even if nobody wants to hear it, or even if there is nobody around to hear it at all. Blue Jasmine, the latest film by prolific filmmaker Woody Allen, tracks the scrambled thoughts of a thoroughly broken woman who tries to pull her life back together. Woody Allen theoretically still has a reputation for being a comedian, and this movie could theoretically be called a comedy, but despite how funny this movie is, it’s actually a full-on modern tragedy.
Jasmine, played by Cate Blanchett (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit trilogy, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and some good movies too) starts the movie broken, and the story flickers between her journey to move forward and the post traumatic stress flashbacks to her privileged life. In one timeline, she is living with her sister (Sally Hawkins – Layer Cake, Vera Drake Never Let Me Go) in San Francisco while trying to make herself worthwhile by taking computer classes and getting a job as a receptionist. In her fantasy past she is a carefree socialite with an amazing wealthy husband (Alec Baldin – 30 Rock, Beetlejuice, and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within fame) who cheats on her behind her back and is running a giant Ponzi scheme while blatantly stealing other people’s money, essentially a fictionalized Bernie Madoff. I wasn’t going to say the name Bernie Madoff because every other review has already said it, but the movie pretty much screams it and he is the best common metaphor to describe the plot.
The strongest aspects of the film stem from Woody Allen’s ability to script and direct brutally awkward scenes, Cate Blanchett’s prowess of bringing the elegant yet unstable Jasmine to life, and the spot on casting for the rest of the characters in the film. The casting bit is especially noteworthy as it allows actors like Alec Baldwin (Capital One credit card commercials, Beetlejuice), Andrew Dice Clay (Entourage) or Louis C.K. (Louie, Parks and Recreation) to come in, use established personas to fill in characters in the script, and still feel like they are contributing to the story in a worthwhile manner, even if the acting is formulaic at times. Cate Blanchett can’t be undersold though. There is nothing formulaic about her, and between Allen’s words and her acting skills they create a very real portrait of insanity.
The weakest aspect of the film was, strangely, the tempo. Not the pace, that was great, but the beats between actors in some scenes, especially early in the movie during conversations between Sally Hawkins and Andrew Dice Clay’s characters. There were a few conversations where it felt like the two weren’t on screen at the same time, that the cuts back and forth between them weren’t flowing right. This wasn’t an issue for me for most of the movie (especially when characters were on screen at the same time, the tempo there was always great) but when it was an issue, it was a notable one for me. That might just be me being picky.
There is something of a twist to the ending to Jasmine’s story that I’m not going to ruin, but the real secret to the film is that she had been broken all along, as had every other character in the film. Jasmine’s real problem isn’t that she’s unable to come to terms with her new situation, but that she’s unable to come to terms with the fact that she is just as broken as everybody else she knows. That she is human. Like all tragedies, that’s ultimately the point: to see this great figure up on stage or screen and feel the pain of their fall from greatness and recognize that that person could be us.
Allegories and greater meanings aside, Blue Jasmine is still a funny, sad, but mostly an unrelenting character study of a truly interesting woman.
Rating: 
ComicsOnline gives Blue Jasmine 4.5 out of 5 vodka martinis.
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Beetlejuice.
