Boris (Larry David), a physicist at the University of Chicago who considers himself a genius and is extremely pessimistic about the world and human nature, jumped off a building and attempted suicide after inexplicably breaking up with his wife, quit his job and moved to Manhattan, New York, to teach children chess for a living. One night, she finds Melody (Evan Rachel Wood), a naïve young girl who has run away from home from Mississippi, on her doorstep. Melody asked Boris to take her in, and the reluctant Boris only agreed to let her stay for one night, but did not expect that Melody not only had great respect for his genius, but also praised him in front of friends of the same age, and gradually fell in love with himself. Despite the age difference in their forties, the two decided to get married. Soon melody's mother, Marietta (Patricia Clarkson), visits Mississippi after being abandoned by her husband and falls in love with Boris's friend Kevin (Adam Brooks) at first sight. Kevin helps Marietta become a photographer, but Marietta, who is dissatisfied with Boris, tries her best to break him up with Melody...
New York resident Boris Yellnikoff spent his life trying to impress his ideology on religion, relationships, and the randomness (and worthlessness) of existence, and to speak out to all listeners, including listeners. But as he succumbs to the childish Mississippi's out-of-control Melodie St. Ann Celestine living in his apartment, his reclusive anger is replaced by an impossible friendship, and Boris begins to shape the worldly view of the vulnerable young girl to be commensurate with himself. "Anything works" is his motto when it comes to falling in love, but when Melodie's parents finally find her life, his already confused life complicates the situation. Written by Massie Twins
Like Woody Allen's latter film, Blue Jasmine (2013), the film draws a lot of clues from Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. Marietta, a southern urban metropolitan woman, echoed Blanche DuBois in a number of ways, including panicking at Melodie's apartment and feeling co-ordinated by her drinking. At least one of her lines ("You're not the gentleman I'm expecting") is a direct homage to "The StreetCar of Desire".
Woody Allen's approach to work is somewhat ironic, and while it may seem ironic, it surpasses most of the other great filmmakers out there today. Since 1967, he has released at least one film a year. He didn't know which end of the camera had the lens at first. Up to now, he has encountered a wide variety of genres, themes, casts and main backgrounds as well as classical influences, and his career has always had a clear consistency, even the most remote Woody Allen observer, who can give us exact expectations of him, but the mastery of the technique as a writer and director, and the age spent on mastering these essences, have an extremely rich imprint. It's a simple, classical structural story that tells the story of an old Jewish man who is smarter than anyone else.
He plays Larry Davey in the role of Woody Allen that Woody Allen himself might deny, but he can't deny that it has all the gear that embodies his almost irreplaceable character. But David is the star here, originally playing the role of Zero Mostel, though, though everything is himself. He had extra bites and bothersome dysfunction, which was more confusing than Allen's. Two suitable collaborators can easily maintain each other's flexibility. David plays Boris Yellnikoff, a world-weary intellectual who teaches children to play chess and abuses them when they don't take obvious action. Still, he was a very knowledgeable man. Whatever your opinion of his political and social commentary, we don't choose whether or not to value his intellect when he shows other characters in the opening scenes of the film, they stagger to find this out and reject it. However, to onlookers, he just looks crazy, which is the key to his sneering at crabs. But, despite all his knowledge and wisdom, in the end he can only corollary about all the chaos: to make life happy, you have to do what you want to do, not what others tell you to do.
As pure as that, as we have seen, after divorce and suicide attempts, broad cultural sketches for him were when they entered his purposeful solitary life, and these episodes disbanded the dumb americans of the American South, allowing them to find their true selves untethered by their stubborn traditional customs in the liberal melting pot of New York City. Evan Rachel Wood is full of sarcasm about Boris, and he does have a complete disgust for Boris, no matter what comical name he calls her, she doesn't behave like he's performing his own standing routine like many other comedians' small vehicles, but by reacting in a naïve and confusing way, Boris loses her attraction, Thus providing real performance. The real cartoon is Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley, Jr.
This film is not just a collaboration between two talents who have a lot in common culturally. It's all you could expect from anyone. Larry David is a clever and interesting character in his own life satire, but under Woody's senior instincts, very broad and free characters are honed and refined, which is as wise as ever, because although his work is particularly recent and his strength is strong, this is not his new attempt at photography, like most photographs since Match Point. That's what he began to do, and has always been his staple: a wide range of comedic comedies, intertwined intellectual impulses and familiar intimacy with New York. Moreover, he has left more room for himself to show selfless socio-political attitudes and be cruelly honest with his ideology.
If the film can be said to be an allegorical reproduction of the director's life, then "Anything Works" may be the most important.
The film, which marks Woody Allen's return to his hometown of New York after a four-photo hiatus in Europe, tells the story of Boris Yellnikoff, played by Boris Yellnikoff, the only actor Curb Your Enthusiasm today who works in Hollywood, closest to Allen himself in terms of appearance, mannerisms and philosophy. Plagued by numerous neuroses, Boris has become the ultimate pessimist, seeing life as a long waterslide into the final cesspool. His views were so bleak that he was convinced that suicide was the only option, but even cheap suicide could not fail him.
Tired of the world, Boris gave up much of what society had to offer and spent a lot of time publicly humiliating children at every opportunity while teaching them chess. Yes, Boris is not a happy camper and is proud of that. The fact that he managed to keep the core of four friends was a miracle in itself.
Then, one day's fate led him on a path with Melodie St. Ann Celestine (played by delightful Evan Rachel Wood), a rural far from an outlying area of Louisiana. She is Jethro Bodine of Einstein in Yellnikoff. Complete intellectuals and generations of antagonism. Love at first sight is not, but given the axioms of opposite attraction, Boris soon finds himself mesmerized by the young siren (hinting at Alan's similarities).
While some critics have complained that a lot of the dialogue is stilted and unnatural (it really is), Everything Works Is More of a Stage Play Than Real Life, and I think that's what Allen meant. As a writer and director, he has a lot to say here and refuses to let trivialities like natural interactions become obstacles. It's not that the performance is wooden, but no one in real life speaks like Jernikov, and I'm happy with that. What matters here is the thoughts, ideas, and situations that Alan injects into his role.
Interestingly, while much of the film's themes focus on the contingencies of life and point its nose at the sacred, the film can be easily viewed from both an atheistic and spiritual point of view, especially given how events unfold in seemingly controlled ways.
While not Allen's best work, "whatever it is" will appeal to those who like light romantic comedy, especially those who cause some sparks and laughter in our gray things.