Art and the Outside Storm

Some works of art cannot be separated by the outside events that surround the lives of their creators.  Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks and Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives are two such documents that will always be tangled up with the private lives of their creators.  Below are two mini-essays on each:

Bob Dylan

Blood on the Tracks – Dylan has always denied the autobiographical nature of what is known as the seminal break up album, but his own son has mentioned the connection between the songs and what his parents were going through at the time.  Regardless of the context in which the songs were birthed from, they represent Dylan’s best album since John Wesley Harding.  “Tangled Up in Blue” presents a love affair as a painting with every event happening simultaneously.  A closing line like “we always did feel the same we just saw it from a different point of view” gets me every single time.  I’ve seen “Simple Twist of Fate” played live a few times and never with the same lyrics and each time was a revelation and a pure highlight.  “You’re a Big Girl Now” has those wails and dramatic emotional shifts between anger, bitterness, regret, and extreme sadness.  How one 4 minute song contains such shifts continues to amaze me.  “Idiot Wind” is a song that has no definitive version.  If one is in a dazed, depressed mood, listen to the version on the bootleg series.  If you are inclined for cathartic anger with a no holds bar pace, put on Blood on the Tracks.  If utter disgust and profound bitterness is what you crave, the Hard Rain version will more than satisfy.  For me, at the moment, it is the best song on the album.  We move on to “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When you Go”, the closest thing to a light song on the album.  At 3 minutes long, trips to Honolulu and San Francisco (not to mention Ashtabula) and references to Verlaine and Rimbaud populate the wistful track.  “Meet Me in the Morning” is an amazing blues song and much gentler than the scorched earth musical companion piece of “Call Letter Blues”.  Again the closing line of “Look at that sun, sinkin' like a ship, Ain't that just like my heart, babe, When you kissed my lips?” get me every time (I may have also used that one on a few women and will most likely continue to use it.  It’s such a good line…).  If “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts” is about Dylan’s marriage then I say kudos for using such an impenetrable code.  It is a western love/crime story looking for a movie screen while also gazing at the Jack of Hearts.  “If You See Her, Say Hello” is another song of profound sadness or agonizing anger depending on which version you happen to listen to.  Both are fascinating and great.  “Shelter from the Storm” continues with streams of intense imagery and lines like “beauty walks a razor’s edge, someday I’ll make it mine” that transport the song into another dimension.  The final song is “Buckets of Rain”, which to me is akin to gently shutting the door after a whirlwind of a trip and setting off to whatever adventure or trial lies next.  This is one of my favorite albums which probably accounts for the unabashed gushing tone presented above. 

Woody Allen

Husbands and Wives – Pushed into theaters on the wake of the scandal with Mia Farrow, Husbands and Wives is an unusual film for Woody Allen.  This takes the documentary style of earlier films like Take the Money and Run and Zelig and turns it on two failing marriages.  The movie runs in many parallels to what was happening in their lives.  Woody Allen’s character of Gabe gradually becomes infatuated by a younger woman, while his marriage to Judy (Mia Farrow) deteriorates in a slow roasting fashion after receiving the shocking news that their close friends had split after many years.  Gabe and Judy don’t have blowout fights like Jack (Sydney Pollack) and Sally (Judy Davis) nor do they cheat on each other.  The marriage just unravels.  It starts with an argument about having children which divulges into a larger fight about trust when Gabe asks if Judy would ever lie about putting in her diaphragm.  That inciting argument spirals into other ones involving respect and then a final acknowledgement that their relationship is over.  In the end, Judy wins the breakup as she gets out of a relationship she wanted to escape and winds up happy in the arms of the lover she pursued (Liam Neeson).  Gabe ends up alone to lick his wounds and recover.  It is interesting that in most Woody Allen films with Mia Farrow, the two never really end up together.  This film is the rawest depiction of lost love between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow characters and the timing of this portrayal could not have been planned better (for the studio).  Watching Woody Allen’s character come to terms with his feelings for a much younger woman must have been uncomfortable for many moviegoers (I wish I had seen this movie in the theater.  That would have been fascinating).  Apparently, Mia Farrow and Woody Allen finished filming the movie after she found out about the affair with Soon Yi.  The scene they filmed was the one towards the end of the movie where Judy tells Gabe they need to break up.  The scene is just them together on a couch, with Gabe telling Judy his favorite memories of them together, while he gently touches her.  I cannot imagine how it must have felt to be on that set or to be Mia Farrow being touched by a man who destroyed her life.  It must have been quite the working environment.  Husbands and Wives is unlike any film Woody Allen had made at that time or has made since.  It is a beautiful film that is impossible to separate from the outside storm that surrounded it.  This is a film not to be missed. 

Works Cited

Husbands and Wives. Dir. Woody Allen. Prod. Woody Allen. Perf. Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Judy Davis, and Sydney Pollack. TriStar Pictures, 1992.

Jefferson, Whitney. "Woody Allen's Scandalous Affair With Soon-Yi 'Took A Little Edge Off' His 'Natural Blandness'" Jezebel. N.p., 22 Nov. 2011. Web. 16 Jan. 2014.

Sounes, Howard. Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan. New York: Grove, 2001. Print.