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Celebrity

 

Written and Directed by Woody Allen

 I saw Woody Allen’s Celebrity, a fairly dreary film at one level. It presented the usual Allen line about how all intellectual thought, social relationships, etc. is merely a quest by everybody to get the most fame, money, thrills, and sex. Kenneth Branagh plays Woody Allen (evidently Woody, the director, didn’t like Branagh’s attempt to mimic his director; but who other than a Woody-type could say the lines written by Woody, the writer?) and drifts from woman to woman, betraying and being betrayed, absurdly transparent in his motivations and silly in his flatteries and rationalizations.

But there is also the wife of the Branagh character, who he casts off at the beginning of the film and who goes searching for help of various kinds. There is the Roman Catholic Church, but the priests are as banal as the New York society, in their own way. She also goes to a famous makeover expert and eventually does get made over. One expects her to end in the same kind of despair as the Branagh character. But she fares better. The difference is grace.

A man, played by Joe Mantegna, pops in on her makeover doctor’s office while she is making plans for the physical transformation. But Mantegna says she is fine as she is. In context, it seems like a boldface lie. She is not attractive at all. But as she gets involved with this man, we notice changes, and not only from the makeover.

She hesitates about marriage, at one point leaving Mantegna at the altar. For she is “waiting for the other shoe to drop.” This man seems all too perfect. He must be an axe murderer or something. But she talks to a fortune teller (!) who tells her simply to trust. She does, marries, and finds happiness. The Mantegna character seems in retrospect to be a Christ-surrogate. He demands nothing of her, changes her life by giving her undeserved respect and love.

Jesus does take us as we are, but he does not tell us we are perfectly ok, as we are. Rather, he shows us our sins and takes us through the path of repentance. There is no repentance in this film, but there is something like grace. But how can grace function without standards? That is an important theological question, and it is also a question in our interpersonal relationships.

But at least the film admits that we need help, and that help must be quite out of the ordinary if it is to meet our need. The movie begins and ends with a skywriter writing “HELP.” At the end, the Branagh character watches the writing (as part of a film) and sits dazed. Only his ex-wife has found the help for which the film cries to heaven.