January 20–27, 2000

movie shorts

Sweet and Lowdown

Yet another version of the same movie that Woody Allen has been making for years, Sweet and Lowdown features a remarkable performance by Sean Penn as fictional 1930s jazz guitarist Emmett Ray. The film is structured as a documentary, with talking heads like Allen and Nat Hentoff describing Ray’s genius, drunkenness and great unfulfilled promise. The film’s most striking aspect — aside from Penn’s generous performance — are the disagreements among these interviewees: through their varying memories, the film addresses questions of historical record, canon-formations, processes of cultural evaluation, not to mention the instabilities of identities and reputations. You see why this would interest Allen, who’s had his own run-ins with fame and legacy-making. But Emmett is a fascinating character in his own right: ambitious, anxious and afraid of his own talent. He diverts himself by shooting at rats in garbage dumps, pilfering compulsively and sleeping around. This despite the fact that he does have a wife (short term), played as a shallow glamorpuss by Uma Thurman, and a love of his life, a mute, perpetually girlish laundress played by Samantha Morton whose role is not a little disturbing. Emmett is distraught when he first picks her up on the boardwalk (he tells his musician pal, "I want a talking girl!"), but comes to need her silent devotion and unquestioning loyalty. Given Allen’s very public biography, the film seems to let you make of this what you will.

—Cindy Fuchs