Blue Jasmine

This will make you uneasy

Blue Jasmine

Never have I felt so depressed watching an Allen movie than I did while I watched Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) or Blue Jasmine to be correct; and I mean that as a good thing. Being a tribute to Tennessee William’s famous play,” A streetcar named desire” and brushed off with a real life incident of the Madoff scandal, Blue Jasmine is a tragic movie about a middle-aged New York socialite who is forced to move in with her estranged sister when she finds out that her husband Hal (Alec Baldwin) was a part of a Ponzi scheme and they are now purely broke.
Being clad in pearls, Channel, Hermes and Louis Vuitton, living in a beautiful Park Avenue home, vacationing at the Hamptons and hosting lavish parties for friends, Janette (or Jasmine), never imagined that she would have to share a mere pea sized apartment in San Fran with her adopted sister who has no class nor taste (in men or otherwise) but has two noisy sons from her boyfriend.
Ginger, (Sally Hawkins) the sister, welcomes her with open arms and makes her feel comfortable but Jasmine has developed a mental and physical condition which makes it hard for her to be at peace. Jasmine needs Xanax to calm her anxiety attacks and drinks very frequently in a day, her eyes are swollen from all the crying and stress that she is under now that she doesn’t know what to do with her life. She is an exhausting character to observe as an audience and even more exhausting to play as an actress.
Jasmine has a tendency to look the other way when she knows that something is not right and needs looking after. Why? Well, because Jasmine says that she is “Very trusting” as a person. Being very well aware of the fact that her perfect world will soon come crashing down if she tries to fix the fallen pieces of her life with her husband’s promiscuous behavior and the financial shams that pays for her lifestyle; she pretends to look the other way, hoping that it will soon be alright. But will it…?
Running back and forth (past and present) as a contradiction of the life then and the life now of Jasmine (formally known as Janette), Woody aims at comparing how life turns for the better, or even for worse. The true depth of the movie is realized at the end when we see Jasmine homeless, friendless and family less, sitting on a street bench talking to her own self and forgetting the lines to the song (Blue Moon) that played when she and her husband met. Jasmine is left stranded and that was the last that we saw of her.
Powerful actor from Down Under, Cate Blanchett proves her mettle with this role and casts an ever so powerful spell on the critics and the audience. Sally Hawkins though in supporting role, is not to be taken for granted. She played her role with much verve than we could have never expected from anyone but her. The male roles were vivid and had immense range and might be interpreted emasculating in the light of star female leads.
Blue Jasmine was honored on many occasions at many auspicious award ceremonies. The movie was nominated for Oscars under Best Original Screenplay category and Cate won the Oscar for Best Leading Actress.
The movie did not scream Woody at all which is why I have my doubts about it. I would probably not have watched it if this wasn’t one of his creations. But the fact of the matter is that Blue Jasmine seems great as a well crafted independent movie, with an Allen stamp on its front, well it has become what it has become.