Woody Allen
Sweet and Lowdown

What should lead one to consider this "Sweet and Lowdown" as a great film? Woody Allen's thirty-first film, which hit the theaters in 1999 and was released in Italy under the title "Accordi e disaccordi", does not differ much from the previous works of the great American director. Here you will find the same brilliant humor of many of his films (from "Love and Death" to "Mighty Aphrodite") as well as some reminiscences of "Broadway Danny Rose" and "Zelig". There begins to creep in the doubt that the little intellectual has run out of ideas and is indulging in an intense, indecent cut-and-paste work drawing from his past products. Not at all. Allen will later demonstrate with his subsequent films like "Matchpoint", "Scoop", "Melinda and Melinda" to still have many arrows in his quiver, but regardless of the "hindsight" the very same "Sweet and Lowdown" is proof of his solid brilliance. But let's proceed in order.

The plot unfolds through the accounts of various musical critics and experts (including Woody Allen), who narrate the story of one of the most famous guitarists of the early twentieth century, Emmet Ray (Sean Penn). He has a prodigious musical talent, but on the contrary, he shows a lack of feelings that leads him to be a mediocre person. He lives in the shadow of another guitarist, "The Gypsy who lives in France", namely Django Reinhardt, whom he cannot surpass. The protagonist's main occupations are alcohol, luxury, and women and, throughout the film, Ray justifies his excessive lifestyle continually stating "I am an artist." Perpetually drunk and late for work, he spends nights shooting rats at the dump or staring at passing trains. One day, a mute woman, Hettie, crashes into his miserable life. She deeply loves Ray who, however, decides to leave her to continue on his path alone. He marries the promiscuous writer Blanche (Uma Thurman), gets betrayed, goes through various misadventures and only at the end, when it's too late, as one of the narrating voices states, will he be able to express with music his tangle of suffering, joy, and pain reaching the same levels as Django.

The first characteristic of the feature film is certainly the excellent performance of the actors. Sean Penn is at his best and manages to get into the shoes of a man with exceptional artistic skills, but who cannot fully express himself and wears out in the inability to match his idol. Yet one cannot hate this character because his inability to live a real life, which simultaneously drives him to both avoid bonds and detest loneliness, is blatant. A tragicomic figure who gets lost in excesses and legitimates his mistakes with a false stereotype. On par with Penn is Samantha Morton who, for the character of Hettie, a humble mute laundress, evokes the tender disenchantment of the great Giulietta Masina (also nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress). Uma Thurman convinces in the role of an aspiring writer who initially seems to show no dissatisfaction in having to continuously indulge Ray but will later reveal herself to be as selfish as her new husband.

According to some critics, Allen's goal was the intention to give glory to a character who had slipped into oblivion; a hypothesis that would imply great nobility in purpose but could also prove sterile. The New York director showed the intention to go beyond even the analysis of the cursed artist figure and his relationship to art and competition by bringing to completion an intimate drama caused by personal faults and misunderstandings. Furthermore, "Sweet and Lowdown" qualifies as a perfectly measured mix of documentary and film (a genre defined as "mockumentary"), a sort of folk tale where figures and episodes have undergone with the flow of time various retouches and additions, as testified by the three amusing versions of the anecdote that sees Ray hiding in the car of an Italian-American gangster lover of his wife Blanche. The perfect reconstruction of 1930s America, caught between prohibition and teetering between fun and rigor, is another point in favor of Allen.

Not a masterpiece, but still an excellent product. After all, we are talking about Woody Allen...