Film Review

A Trip Down Memory Lane with Bill Marx

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The Marx Brothers created the kind of universally appealing comedy that transcends time and trend. Chico, Groucho and Harpo (and occasionally Zeppo) had worked on stage, screen and radio for nearly 50 years when their last film, “Love Happy,” premiered in 1949. They left behind a treasure trove of comedic classics, including “Cocoanuts” (1929), “Animal Crackers” (1930), “Horse Feathers” (1932) and “Duck Soup” (1933).

By the time television burst on the cultural scene in the 1950’s, the vaudeville-era stars were middle-aged and the transition to the new medium gave them the largest audience they ever had. The kinescope technology available then created poor quality recordings, but the development of film allowed preservation of such later classics as Harpo’s famous 1955 recreation of the “Duck Soup” mirror scene on the “I Love Lucy” show. This episode has rerun in syndication for decades and has been seen by millions.

Most of the Marx Brothers’ television performances were as guests on TV variety shows such as The Jack Benny Program, The Colgate Comedy Hour, and The Red Skelton Hour. Although they all forged careers as individuals on the smaller screen, only Groucho was successful with his long-running “You Bet Your Life.”

Thanks to the teamwork of Harpo’s curator son, Bill Marx, and Marxophile producer Robert S. Bader, a new three-disc DVD set, “The Marx Brothers TV Collection,” is now available from Shout! Factory with ten hours of shows, home movies, outtakes, commercials and interviews from their golden television years.

The Journal spoke by phone with Bill Marx about this project and about his memories of growing up as a member of such a famous family.

“The Marx Brothers embraced every facet of the industry,” Marx began. “Although you can see all their movies on the internet, this DVD set is kind of special because it’s all TV. In a way, it’s good they haven’t been overexposed. This compilation of their life’s work is a positive thing for Marx Brothers fans, especially the youth who can see these for the first time.”

He and Bader wanted to highlight segments not available anywhere else, which is why they did not include the famous Lucy episode in their collection.

Marx enthusiastically talked about his religious upbringing. His father Harpo (born Arthur) always felt Jewish growing up, although Harpo’s parents never had much time for embracing the outward traditions of being a Jew. “They were too busy trying to survive in turn of the century New York City. The only time they experienced being Jewish was when they had to defend it.”

Harpo, whose will donated two harps to the state of Israel, was heavily involved in United Jewish Appeal and other Jewish causes. His first trip to Israel was in 1961. When he came home, he shared his experience with his son.

“Dad was probably 72 or 73 at the time,” said Marx, who is 77. “He told me it was the first time he ever really felt his Jewishness without having to defend it. He was very moved by being in a place where Jews were not a minority. It was a real epiphany for him.”

The brothers rarely got together socially with their families. “They would see each other every day at a country club they belonged to for lunch. They were sick of each other,” he chuckled. He remains close to his cousins Bob (Gummo Marx’s son) and Miriam (Groucho’s eldest daughter).

Like his two brothers and sister, Bill Marx was adopted. His desire to pay tribute to his dad inspired him to create the website, harposplace.com, and to undertake this latest project. “I am the luckiest guy in the world to have ended up accidentally in the orbit of the Marx Brothers,” he said. “I don’t know how to repay anybody except by producing this kind of homage to them and to my dad, who was such a unique and special person.”

Although he never embraced a traditional Jewish journey, Marx observes Yizkor, lighting yahrzeit candles for his parents. “I don’t appear in temple all that much,” he said, “but Yizkor is the one Jewish observance I set aside.”

On a closing note, Marx revealed his thoughts about Israel. “I am one of those incurably optimistic kind of guys when it comes to Israel. I think they will somehow or another weather this. They certainly know how to take care of themselves.”

Visit harposplace.com for more information. The Marx Brothers TV Collection is available from Shout!Factory.com and amazon.com.

Wish I Weren’t There

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Almost exactly 10 years ago, Zach Braff debuted his wildly acclaimed “Garden State” at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. Braff played Andrew, a depressed, heavily medicated twenty-something year old aspiring actor who returned from Los Angeles to his native Newark for his mother’s funeral.

“Wish I Was Here,” to be released in Boston July 25, (again) stars Braff, this time as Aidan, a struggling thirty-something actor who (still) lives in Los Angeles in states of perpetual malaise and financial distress. If viewed as the same character, Aidan/Andrew’s only observable accomplishment over the last 10 years was his acquisition of a wife and two children. Otherwise, his last decade has been spent on a treadmill.

Unfortunately, almost two hours into the movie, the audience can relate to Aidan’s melancholy after what feels like a decade spent artistically running in place.

To be fair, the story had potential and the star-studded cast had the chops.

Aidan Bloom calls himself an actor, but had only one “starring” role many years ago as the “before” guy in a dandruff commercial. He spends a good deal of his time daydreaming that he is a spaceman and cursing in front of the kids. His wife Sarah (Kate Hudson) supports the family, trudging off to her data-cruncher job at the water department, where she contends with the spiritual wasteland of her cubicle and the infuriating sexual harassment by her cellmate. Their two kids, pre-teen Grace and younger brother Tucker, attend a pricey yeshiva school, paid for by Aidan’s father, (Mandy Patinkin). Aidan exists in a bubble of self-indulgent fantasy until Gabe develops cancer that requires expensive out-of-pocket treatments and, faced with limited financial resources, decides to pull the plug on the kids’ tuition rather than on himself.

Josh Gad in his favorite spaceman costume.

Josh Gad in his favorite spaceman costume.

As if the cosmos itself had snapped its fingers, Aidan awakens from his trance. Suddenly, he has to contend with the realities of a dying parent, an impatient wife, and kids who need schooling. As Gabe must confront death, his son must confront adulthood and its attending responsibilities.

Rather than subject his kids to the taunting and thumping of his still painful public school years, Aidan homeschools them, with predictably mixed results. The world is his blackboard, and he starts in his own backyard. (“Nice little slice of Mumbai you have here,” Gabe quipped). The lessons alternate between the practical (resurrecting a neglected pool) and the universal (appreciating the magic of desert camping), with a bit of street-smart manipulation thrown in (scamming an Aston Martin test drive).

Their value, however, is not pedagogic (as California Standard Tests would no doubt eventually reveal). These are lessons for the teacher, not his students. Slowly (as in excruciatingly slowly), Aidan awakens to his ability to discipline and be disciplined, to be open to family intimacy, and to appreciate parenthood.

In short, Aidan starts to grow up, and in the process transitions from perpetual child to budding head of his own nuclear family.

The best part of the film, especially for those of us suffering from “Homeland” withdrawal, is Patinkin as Gabe Bloom (a dead ringer for his Saul Berenson). The patriarch Bloom is the film’s only nuanced character, a man whose religion is both sword and shield. His biggest disappointment is his relationship with his sons, but rather than admit it, he hides behind caustic barbs and Talmudic aphorisms. He is not Aidan’s ideal role model.

Josh Gad, as Aidan’s reclusive and grizzly brother Noah, does his best with a bizarre role and Hudson is light and gracious as Aidan’s inexplicably supportive wife.

The movie’s insurmountable problem is that it seems stuck in the glib mediocrity of television sitcoms. The gags and artsy California montages feel tired and trite. The countless vanity close ups of Braff go from embarrassing to annoying. When Hassids show up on Segways, all that is missing is a canned laughter track.

“Wish I Was Here” has some solid soulful messages about family, Judaism and life’s challenges in the modern age of insta-everything, but they are buried beneath layers of extraneous and superficial footage. As the late great Roger Ebert succinctly stated, “No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.” ‘Nuff said.
Pictured at top: Zach Braff and Kate Hudson are co-parents to Pierce Gagnon (left) and Joey King (right).

On Film, Faith and Family

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Zach Braff should be as exhausted as he looks. On his day off from his eightshow- a-week lead role in “Bullets Over Broadway,” Woody Allen’s musical comedy that opened in April, he is not relaxing and renewing. Instead, he was in Boston on a publicity blitz of interviews and appearances in support of his favorite thing in life: his filmmaking.

“Wish I Was Here,” which opens in Boston on July 18, is his second time both behind and in front of the camera. It has been 10 years since his indie film, “Garden State,” which he also directed, wrote and starred in, blazed its way from the Sundance Film Festival to cult favorite, picking up a Grammy for best soundtrack along the way. Braff is passionate about this project, his newest film, which he funded through a Kickstarter campaign. He deflected the criticism he attracted from those who felt that celebrities should bankroll their own projects. “You can’t make a movie these days about Jews,” he stated. “We’re 2% of the population and shrinking, and none of the studios want to make a movie for or about us. Part of the crowd-funding was to be able to tell an honest story about a Jewish family.”

In this new film, which he co-wrote with his older brother Adam, Braff stars as Aidan Bloom, a 30-something secular Jew whose kids attend Yeshiva (paid for by their observant

grandfather, Gabe (played by the always captivating Mandy Patinkin), and whose wife works a job she hates to support his “career” of auditioning for acting jobs he never gets. When Gabe is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Adam is forced to transition from child to parent, from cared for to caregiver. Along the way, he taps into his own spirituality and reconciles with his father and his faith.

The plot, however, is secondary to Braff’s real purpose in making the film.

“This film is about people who are searching for their spirituality and haven’t found it yet,” Braff stated. “I identify with the cultural aspects of Judaism. I grew up with stories of the Holocaust. I relate to the stories of Jews being persecuted and forever being killed and chased from wherever they lived. You can’t help thinking, ‘Wow, I am descended from these people that nobody wanted to be on this earth.’ I want to protect that.”

The three Braff brothers (older brother Joshua is also a writer) were raised in New Jersey in a strictly Orthodox home. Although Zach and Adam scripted the film, Joshua collaborated on developing Aidan’s character.

“My brother and I wanted to write about our faith and we wanted to write about growing up Jewish. Because we’re 10 years apart, our father raised us differently. Adam went to an Orthodox, very strict yeshiva and it pushed him away from Judaism. It had the opposite effect my father had hoped for,” Braff explained.

“By the time I was going to school, we were conservative and kosher, but I was going to secular school and Hebrew school three times a week instead of yeshiva,” he continued. “We knew we could approach the subject of a secular man’s search for spirituality because we were raised from two different stances.”

“We were a great yin and yang for each other,” he shared.

Braff’s father, who welcomes Shabbat every Friday with prayers and dinner, was concerned that his sons might be taking digs at organized religion in general, and Judaism in particular. “I made it clear to him that this movie isn’t about condemning Orthodoxy at all,” Braff said.

Rather, it is about the yearnings of a young man to tap into something which he knows is there but which he has yet to experience.

Two characters in the film, an old man and a young rabbi, illustrate Braff’s point. “The old rabbi isn’t surviving well in a modern world, let alone trying to enroll a secular man in faith. Then there is the opposite with the young rabbi, who goes out of his way to tap into the spirituality that Aidan has. He untangles him from needing the exact right words of Judaism and instead focuses in on exactly where he is.”

He smiles broadly. “This was the dream rabbi my brother and I always hoped for, but never met, and so we created him. My father cries his eyes out every time he sees it.”

For his soundtrack, Braff again enlisted bands he loved to create original content for the film (“Garden State” launched The Shins from the indie to mainstream realms). The playlist includes songs by Bon Iver, Cat Power, Coldplay and The Shins.

A Trivial Pursuit tidbit about Braff is that he is related to Mitt Romney, whom he met when flying to Utah last fall. When asked if his mother is really Romney’s ninth cousin, he laughed. “It’s a very bizarre fact, but it’s true. The research was done by a genealogist who clearly has too much time on his hands.”

He paused and then leaned forward, blue eyes thoughtful and somber. “I fought hard to keep this a Jewish movie with a Jewish star and I hope the Jews of Boston and Massachusetts will go see it. I’d like to make more films about my Jewish experience.”

Polish Film Explores an ‘Ida’ State of Mind

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If Edward Steichen or Ansel Adams made a movie, it might look like Pawel Pawlikowski’s small gem “Ida,” shot in luminous monochrome as a string of stark meditative stills. Although set in the early 1960’s in the desolate, austere Polish countryside, we could be anywhere, anytime, because the state where “Ida” takes place is actually a state of mind.

When we first meet Anna, she is a novice in the rural convent where she has lived since unknown persons left her on its doorstep as an infant in 1945. She is about to make the irrevocable decision to take her final vows. But before she can take that step, she is ordered to make contact with a surviving relative who has recently surfaced: her aunt, Wanda Gruz, a vodka-slugging, Communist zealot who has been demoted from state prosecutor to petty magistrate. Anna and Wanda are as black and white as is the cinematography.

Anna travels to Gdansk to meet this aunt, who answers the door bleary-eyed, cigarette dangling between lipstick-smeared lips, as a one-night stand hastily dresses just within Anna’s field of vision. Wanda, who earned the nickname “Red Wanda” for the many people she convicted during the Communist purges, gruffly informs Anna that she is Jewish, that her real name is Ida, and that the two of them must set out to discover what happened to Anna/Ida’s parents during the war. For Wanda, the decision to make this trip will be as life altering as Anna’s to take her final vows, the consequences as irrevocable and stark.

Thus begins a road-trip with the unlikeliest of traveling companions. “I’m the slut and you’re the little saint,” Wanda proclaims. Thelma and Louise this ain’t.

As the two travel to Anna/ Ida’s birthplace, we see the bleak lunar state that is postwar, post-Communist Poland, a country painfully suspended in time, overwhelmed by the weight of such cruel and tyrannical personal and political histories. Here and there are glimpses of mirth (usually activated by large quantities of vodka) and regeneration (accompanied by the relief of a John Coltrane soundtrack), but those who lived through the horrors of war still outnumber the luckier new generation coming of age in a time of peace.

With her gritty prosecutor’s relentless tenacity, Wanda gets to the bottom of what happened to Anna/Ida’s parents. Along the way, we encounter the countless contradictions that existed in Poland during the war and that live on through its survivors. Catholics either turned on or saved their Jewish neighbors (or, in some cases, both). Then came the Stalinist purges, again pitting Pole against Pole. While “Ida” is at its heart a film about Anna/Ida and Wanda’s relationship, Pawlikowski candidly addresses the issues that colored his country’s history, and affect it still.

Ida director


Director Pawel Pawlikowski

At 80 minutes, “Ida” is as complete and satisfying a film as a cinemaphile could wish for. Agata Kulesza is riveting as Wanda, and Agata Trzebuchowska radiates a luminescent innocence as Anna/ Ida. A soundtrack dominated by the mellifluous Coltrane, and a cinematographer who successfully exploits the richness of a gray palette, are icing on the cake.

Ultimately, “Ida” is an examination of the powers of memory, ignorance and free will. For Wanda and Anna/Ida, the choices and contexts are different, but the stakes are the same. Was Anna/Ida victim or blessed as Anna, a girl as ignorant of Ida as she was of the existence of free will? Who will she choose to be, now that she knows what she would be giving up? And how can Wanda integrate the answers she receives to the painful questions that have tortured her for so long? Who is she now that she can no longer fend off her memories?

“Ida” is one of those rare, not-to-be-missed, movies. Especially during this season of mind-numbing, revenue-driven summer blockbusters, it is a reminder that film is at its core a medium of art.

Pictured above: Anna/Ida (Agata Trzebuchowska) and Wanda (Agata Kulesza) star in “Ida.” Courtesy of Music Box Films


Truth and Consequences

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Another side of the Supreme Court’s Clarence Thomas

Pictured: Anita Hill at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 1991.

On October 9, 1991, during televised proceedings, an arresting young woman in an eye-catching aqua linen dress testified to the character of her male supervisor, stating that he had repeatedly made graphic sexual comments and unwarranted sexual overtures towards her while she was employed by the U.S. Department of EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission).

The woman was Anita Hill, the first African American professor tenured by the University of Oklahoma College of Law. The man was Clarence Thomas, African American nominee to replace retiring Thurgood Marshall on the U. S. Supreme Court. The proceedings were Thomas’ confirmation hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee, a group of 14 white men. Those few days changed the course of Anita’s life and planted the seeds that revolutionized an entire body law.

The author with Anita Hill at the opening of “Anita” at Kendall Landmark Cinema.

Academy-Award winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock’s splendid new documentary film, “Anita: Speaking Truth To Power,” tells this story with archival footage, contemporary interviews, and scrapbook-like glimpses of Anita’s family stories. The result is as good as documentaries get: the audience learns, feels and questions.

Mock opens her film on October 9, 2010, with Ginni Thomas’ voice message to Ms. Hill, asking her to consider apologizing for what she did to her husband when she testified at his 1991 Senate confirmation hearings

“I am reaching across the airwaves,” Mrs. Thomas said. “I pray about this.”

“That phone call is symbolic of the story,” Mock pointed out in a conversation with the Journal. “It represented how relevant and resonant and raw the issue of the hearing is almost 20 years later. It is still on people’s minds, and it still evokes an immediate response.”

“Anita” lays out the historical chronology of the events clearly, yet with enough nuance and depth to engage both cinemaphile and attorney. Lili Haydn’s score accomplishes her goal to “tickle the heart as the words tickle the brain.”

The youngest of 13 children, Ms. Hill grew up in a rural Oklahoma farming family, exhibiting the dignity, poise and intelligence she displayed at the hearings from an early age. She graduated from Yale Law School and worked in Washington D.C. as special counsel to Clarence Thomas. Because of that work connection, the FBI contacted her for a routine character background check on Thomas when Republican President Bush nominated him to the Supreme Court. Ms. Hill filled out the questionnaire and sent it to the Senate, assuming it would be confidential. Somehow, it was leaked to the press, and Ms. Hill found herself a reluctant witness at the confirmation hearings.

From that moment on, her life would never be the same.

The hearings were an excruciating example of democracy run amok with senator after senator grilling Ms. Hill with questions and comments meant to humiliate, embarrass and confront.

“Are you a scorned woman?” drawled Senator Heflin of Alabama. “Do you have a martyr complex?” Never had there been such an attack on a witness with nothing to gain.

“People didn’t understand,” Ms. Hill said. “They thought I was on trial. The issue became my character instead of the character of the nominee.”

Thomas denied Ms. Hill’s allegations, dismissing them as a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.” The Senate confirmed him 52 to 48 and he sits on the Supreme Court today, where his conservative vote is often the fifth in the Court’s frequent 5-4 decisions, including Bush v. Gore.

For Ms. Hill, the hearings’ immediate aftermath was not as rosy. “The hearings changed my life,” she reflected, “the way I see the world.” She received death threats; the press hounded her. The conservative republican state legislators tried to close the law school when they realized Ms. Hill’s tenure prevented them from firing her.

Yet, her testimony also unleashed a national discussion and awareness of sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Congress passed tougher laws with more protections and remedies for victims. Since 1991, the numbers of sexual harassment claims and women elected to public office has surged.

“Despite the high cost, it was worth having the truth come out,” Ms. Hill acknowledged. “People misunderstand that harassment is about the sex. It’s really about the control and the power.”

After years spent deliberately out of the spotlight, the deeply private Ms. Hill decided that the time had come to tell her story. A friend recommended she watch Freida Mock’s documentary about Tony Kushner, and Ms. Hill connected with Mock’s style. Three years in the making, “Anita” debuted to sold-out crowds at the renowned Sundance Film Festival.

“I wanted people to understand who Anita is and why she did what she did. In the sensationalism of the hearings, I felt the story of Anita Hill was lost,” Mock said.

“Anita” is a brilliant, engaging, enraging but ultimately uplifting film. Ms. Hill’s bravery, generosity and intelligence pierce the dark murky residue left by those 14 senators some 20 years ago. Her legacy empowers a new generation facing the same old issues of gender and workplace inequalities.

“If I am not public, then there will be a sense of victory that they will have over me,” Hill said. “I try to live each day with a heart full of grace.”

Human Enslavement Was Not Unique to the Nazis

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What must it have been like for the Viennese Jews on November 10, 1938, the morning after Kristallnacht? One day earlier, their synagogues stood, their shops were open and their bank accounts existed. Yet in the blink of an eye their status changed from marginalized to subjugated, and they were helpless to change it.

In “12 Years a Slave,” which is based on a true story, we meet Solomon Northup, an African-American violinist in upstate New York who lived an integrated, privileged life with his wife and two children. It was 1841 and the racial cruelty of the antebellum south might as well have been happening on the moon.

Until, that is, the day Northup accepted a job from a pair of white men to play violin in a circus. Lured to Washington, D.C., he was wined, dined (and wined some more) until he passed out in a drunken stupor. He awoke shackled and enslaved.

The remaining two hours of the film shine an unflinching lens on the vile evil and frenzied violence that defined plantation slavery in the 1800’s. It is a challenge to endure and a relief to conclude. Northup spent a dozen years being passed from master to master, and we witness every humiliation, whiplash and sociopathic plantation owner uncomfortably close-up. The pathos is all the more visceral because we know Northup was born into freedom, and that he is worldlier than his custodians. We feel his desperation. Although the film ends on a happy note, we remain unsettled and sad. Where does this subhumanization of one group by another come from?

The time, place and circumstances of “12 Years a Slave” and Kristallnacht are different, but the same wrong was inflicted. In America and in Nazi Germany, white plantation owners and Aryan SS guards gave themselves permission to enslave people and practice ruthless sadism. What is most disturbing about “12 Years a Slave,” however, is not the desensitizing violence; it is the lack of closure, and the dark thoughts and feelings that evokes. Where is the justice? Where is the retribution? Elie Weisel may have been able to offer God his forgiveness for allowing the Holocaust to exist, but for some of us spectators, that just doesn’t settle the score.

Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Solomon Northup in “12 Years a Slave.”

“The Prime Ministers”: A Peek Into Israel’s Inner Sanctum of Power, Privilege and Privacy

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Ambassador Yehuda Avner, author of the 2010 best-seller, “The Prime Ministers” and subject of Richard Trank’s new documentary, “The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers,” has a twinkle in his eye, a magnetic, on-camera presence, and a melodious voice.

Trank’s directorial instinct to focus his lens on Avner as a “talking head” is spot on: he devours center stage as if it were the role he had been waiting in the wings to play.

“From the moment I met the Ambassador, I knew this approach would work because he is such an intimate, lively storyteller,” Trank explained via email.

During his five decades as personal aide and speechwriter to Israeli leaders (including five prime ministers), Avner bore witness to some of the most candid and private moments during some of the most critical events in Israel’s history. “I used to be the note taker,” Avner said in a phone interview. “I prepared executive summaries for the prime ministers, but I never threw away those original notes. This is the core of the book and the movie.”

Director Trank has divided Avner’s enormous memoir into two films. “The Pioneers” opens with Avner’s teenage involvement in Zionist youth activities in his native Manchester, England in the 1940’s, and ends with Golda Meir’s resignation following the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

(“Soldiers and Peacemakers,” which picks up the story in 1974, will open in Spring 2014.) Avner narrates as Israel’s cinematic chronology unfolds. The footage includes historical newsreels and videotapes of high-level whispered asides and passed notes. The effect is of crouching by a closed door and peeking through a keyhole to an inner sanctum of power, privilege and privacy. The film’s most memorable scenes are Avner’s eyewitness recollections. We hear how violinist Leopold Mahler, Gustav Mahler’s nephew and a member of Avner’s army unit, grabbed his instrument and passionately played “Hava Nagilah” to dancing crowds on Israel Independence Day. We eavesdrop on Prime Minister Eshkol and President Lyndon Johnson as the kibbutznik and the rancher bond over the birthing of a calf at LBJ’s Texas ranch. We see Golda Meir and Henry Kissinger in 1973 huddled in conversation over Israel’s request for American aid, connecting as “fellow Jews.“ This is not the stuff of history books. Yet according to Avner, his book has been adopted as part of the curriculum of many Jewish high schools.

“Most people below a certain age know nothing about Israel’s history. I wanted to bring back to life the personalities of the prime ministers,” Avner said. He is pleased that the release of the film has led more people to read the book.

Don’t miss this important and entertaining film. And then think about reading the book.

Pictured above: Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan met their troops October 21, 1973 in the Golan Heights, during the Yom Kippur War.

No Repentance in Woody Allen’s ‘Blue Jasmine’

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From the beginning of Elul until Rosh Hashanah, the resonant blast of the shofar awakens us from our daily complacency, and reminds us that the time for repentance (teshuva), forgiveness (selicha) and prayer (tefillah) is nigh. The liturgy repeats the same message: God is sovereign; God prefers us to pray as a community rather than as individuals; and we have freedom of choice to recognize, regret and acknowledge.


Jasmine, who is alcoholic and psychotic in addition to being blue, would find no solace in shul this year. She has not appeased the injured parties; she does not strive to do good; she lacks understanding about the consequences of her actions and cares for no one and nothing that extends beyond her polished and toned epidermis. She is all veneer, from her shellacked nails to her counterfeit name. Free will for her is the ability to maintain a minimum level of Stoli in her blood.

The plot of Woody Allen’s latest film, “Blue Jasmine,” is straightforward. Hal (Alec Baldwin) is a fraudulent financier in Bernie Madoff clothing. He builds a house of cards that allows him to pamper his wife Jasmine (a luminescent and spellbinding Cate Blanchett) and countless mistresses. They hang with their own in the Hamptons and Park Avenue. Alas, it all comes tumbling down (I will not spoil the one and only surprise of the predictable script by revealing how). Hal is arrested, and Jasmine is evicted and stripped of all but her pearls, her Chanel purse and her delusions of grandeur.

BlueJAsmine


Cate Blanchett (left), Woody Allen and Alec Baldwin on the set of “Blue Jasmine.”

The opening scene introduces us to her en route to San Francisco. Seated in first class, glass tumbler in hand, she maniacally monologues to her exhausted and overly polite seatmate.

Exiled from New York, she heads for the only refuge available, her sister Ginger’s (the happy-go-lucky Sally Hawkins) working-class apartment. The contrast between the two sisters borders on caricature. Ginger is a divorced, single mom who cheerfully bags groceries to make ends meet and maintains a relationship with her ex (Andrew Dice Clay, as the decent, down-to-earth Augie) for the sake of her two young boys.

Scads of reviews have illumined that “Blue Jasmine” is Allen’s homage to Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Indeed, Ginger plays the concerned, compassionate Stella to Jasmine’s demanding and arrogant Blanche DuBois (a role Blanchett recently devoured on Broadway). As with Blanche, Jasmine’s tenuous grip on reality slips away before our eyes.

Ginger is the anti-Jasmine; she accepts, pardons and moves on. Job-like, she even excuses Jasmine her complicity in instigating Ginger’s financial downfall and her family’s ensuing suffering and destruction. Hawkins’ relentless, upbeat sunniness in the face of these offenses would be maddeningly cloying were it not for the lines Allen provides her that help us to understand that although Ginger has forgiven, she has not forgotten. Ginger would not only be welcome at shul, she would have her own pew. Up front, in the expensive seats.

Cinematically, “Blue Jasmine” is lovely, especially the flashback scenes. Of the cast, Michael Stuhlbarg (of the Coen brothers’ “A Singular Man”) is at once creepy, pathetic and nasty. He manages to wrest his scenes from the overpowering Blanchett, a formidable feat. As Chili, Ginger’s mechanic boyfriend, Bobby Cannavale is obviously trying to clone Brando’s Stanley Kowalski. He is better when he doesn’t try so hard, which is not often.

Interwoven with the “Streetcar” warp is the weft of the Madoff tragedy. Although the “Blue Jasmine” characters are unambiguously blue-blooded, Allen draws a straight line between the film and the actual events. “Tails of Manhattan” is an allegory he published in the March 30, 2009 issue of The New Yorker. In a nutshell (and I encourage you to Google the short piece), Moscowitz and Silverman are two Madoff victims who committed suicide and are reincarnated as two-lb. lobsters. They bump into each other in a restaurant fish tank, where they recognize Madoff as he peers into their tank and chooses yet again to devour them. Incensed, they leap out of their tank and attack the con artist, sending him screaming into the street where the two persuade him to plead guilty and apologize to his victims.

Alas, “Blue Jasmine” lacks such a satisfying denouement. There are neither mea culpas uttered nor retribution exacted. Hal goes to his grave, eyes and teeth intact. Jasmine fades from view as she spins her cocoon of dementia and denial. Their suffering, however, is not the point. Teshuva, selicha and tefillah is.