Tagline: Life can be a comedy or a tragedy, it all depends on how you look at it.
Melinda and Melinda combines romantic comedy and drama in a way that Woody Allen, unique among filmmakers, likes to contrast. It takes place in Manhattan and chronicles a pair of crises that give great reign to the funny and serious talents of Chiwetel Ejiofor, Will Ferrell, Jonny Lee Miller, Radha Mitchell, Amanda Peet, Chloë Sevigny and Wallace Shawn.
All the usual Allen areas are explained — the fragility of love, marital infidelity, sophisticated romance, the inability to communicate. As a character in the movie puts it, “He’s despondent, he’s desperate, he’s suicidal. All the comic elements are in place.”
By his own admission, writer/director Woody Allen has far more ideas for movies than he will ever have time to put on film. The concept for Melinda and Melinda was one of many he spawned over the past several years, but it was one of the most intriguing.
In this film, Allen, one of the most respected filmmakers on the international film landscape for over three decades, explores some of his most beloved terrain: personal struggles with morality, identity, intimacy, jealousy and the vagaries of romantic love. The twist in Melinda and Melinda is introduced in the film’s opening scene, in which four sophisticated New Yorkers enjoy a dinner out on a rainy night.
An anecdote provokes a discussion between writers Max (Larry Pine) and Sy (Wallace Shawn) about the dual nature of human drama, symbolizedby the comedy/tragedy mask of theater. Ultimately a comic tale unfolds, pitted against a more dramatic version of itself — both centered around a somewhat enigmatic woman named Melinda (Radha Mitchell).
Melinda and Melinda is a 2004 film written and directed by Woody Allen. It was premiered at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. The film is set in Allen’s favorite location, Manhattan, and stars Radha Mitchell as the protagonist Melinda, in two story lines, one comic, one tragic. The film received a “rotten” rating from film-review website Rotten Tomatoes and was a flop in North American theaters, with ticket sales below four million dollars. Worldwide ticket sales were $20.1 million.
The premise of the film is that a group of four writers are conversing over dinner. The question arises: Is life naturally comic or tragic? One of the four proposes a simple story (a distraught woman knocks on a door and disrupts a dinner party) and the two prominent playwrights in the group begin telling their versions of this story, one being comic and one tragic.
The film’s dialogue between comedy and tragedy alludes to critical arguments going back to ancient times on the superiority of either art form and the reasons why audiences are drawn to either comedy or tragedy. The film’s conceit on comedy—that people love comedy so much because it helps them to escape from the misery of the real world—alludes to the final message of Preston Sturges’ classic film, Sullivan’s Travels, which dealt with a comedic director attempting to make a serious tragedy, as he finds comedy trite and meaningless. However, the hero discovers that his comedies were more artistic and important to the world than any tragedy he attempts.
Given Allen’s constant self-examination through psychoanalysis, the film can be seen as a dialogue between Allen’s comedic and serious sides on his artistic choices, or between Allen as comedy maker (as he is best known as a comedic director) and another, serious dramatic filmmaker (perhaps Ingmar Bergman, the serious director whom Allen lionizes throughout his oeuvre).
This is not the first time Allen has intertwined comedic and tragic story lines in one picture. He did so, quite deliberately, in 1989’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, the parallel stories of the murderous ophthalmologist and the failed documentary filmmaker counterpointing each other thematically.
Although Radha Mitchell plays Melinda in both versions, no one else is in both. Chloë Sevigny, Jonny Lee Miller, and Chiwetel Ejiofor star with her in the tragedy, while Will Ferrell and Amanda Peet star with her in the comedy.
The film also stars Wallace Shawn as the comic playwright and Larry Pine as the dramatist, and Brooke Smith as Cassie; All three appeared in “Vanya on 42nd Street” (1994, directed by Louis Malle). Steve Carell has a small part as Ferrell’s friend in the comedy.
Melinda and Melinda (2005)
Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Chjwetel Ejiofor, Will Ferrell, Jonny Lee Miller, Radha Mitchell, Amanda Peet, Chloë Sevigny, Arija Bareikis, Brooke Smith, Matt Servitto, Christina Kirk, Alyssa Pridham, Katie Kreisler
Screenplay by: Woody Allen
Production Design by: Santo Loquasto
Cinematography by: Vilmos Zsigmond
Film Editing by: Alisa Lepselter
Costume Design by: Judy L. Ruskin
Set Decoration by: Regina Graves
Art Direction by: Tom Warren
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for adult situations involving sexuality, and substance material.
Distributed by: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Release Date: March 18, 2005
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