Blue Jasmine
Composite Score: 82.83
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Peter Sarsgaard, Sally Hawkins, Daniel Jenks, Max Rutherford, Andrew Dice Clay, Bobby Cannavale, Ali Fedotowsky, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alden Ehrenreich, and Louis C.K.
Director: Woody Allen
Writer: Woody Allen
Genres: Drama, Comedy
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic material, language, and sexual content
Box Office: $99.10 million worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
Blue Jasmine is Woody Allen’s loose adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire, which won Cate Blanchett her second Oscar. The film follows the story of Jasmine, a disgraced New York socialite who moves to San Francisco to live with her sister until she can get back on her feet. As that story unfolds in the present, flashbacks let the audience in on the backstory of what led Jasmine to this desperate situation. The nonlinear narrative provides the audience with a deeply engaging story, and Blanchett’s performance as Jasmine is easily among the greatest performances ever given by a leading lady in film.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
For one thing, there are all the issues with Woody Allen as a human being that work as a strong detractor from all of his films, but that’s not really a critique of the film itself. The true aspect of the film that could turn audiences off to Blue Jasmine is its subjects. They are not overly redeemable or admirable characters. They exist in the complexities and immoralities of everyday life in a way that some audiences might find too close to home or even just off-putting because they want clear heroes and villains to root for. Blue Jasmine has no real heroes and villains, just people working to live their lives better than the day before, which sometimes ends up being at the expense of others and other times at the expense of themselves. By the end of the film, the realness of the characters ends up being – for me at least – one of its most endearing qualities, but it certainly won’t be a film that everyone enjoys.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
I have heard it said – and before watching this film, I said it myself – that Amy Adams was robbed of an Oscar when Cate Blanchett won for Blue Jasmine over her performance in American Hustle. I am here to tell you now, that take is probably incorrect (but if you’d like to get into Amy Adams’s egregious snub at the 89th Academy Awards, we can do that when we get to Arrival). Cate Blanchett absolutely carries this film while giving one of the best performances that I have ever seen. Her ability to switch at will from manic to organized and from loving to hateful and from engaged to spacey keeps you guessing at every turn. She took a basic Woody Allen comedic drama and managed to bring an element of suspense and tension to it that had me on the edge of my seat more than a lot of true thrillers. It is a performance that belongs in a hall of fame, a museum, with its own star on the Walk of Fame, and as many other accolades as it can be given. She is absolutely stunning from start to finish in this.
Not to be outshone by her lead, Sally Hawkins also brings an admirable supporting performance as Jasmine’s sister Ginger, a more down-to-earth divorced mother looking to find a man who will treat her right while dealing with her own sister’s deeply complex life and their strained relationship. Hawkins brings a lightness to the film that consistently cuts through the tension that Blanchett brings in a way that only a mom knows how to, never getting lost in the shuffle but bringing extra flavor to the film and her scenes in a way that helps the audience forget briefly how much they really hate the rest of the film’s characters. It’s not as much of a masterclass, but her performance does so much to allow Cate’s to shine that I can’t not mention it here.
Blue Jasmine is carried by Cate Blanchett’s historic performance, supported by Sally Hawkins’s more grounded but still admirable supporting role, on its way to finding a spot among the Greatest Film of All Time. Woody Allen’s personal proclivities and the film’s starkly real characters will inevitably turn some viewers away, but those who stay will be rewarded by the two women working in tandem to make more than just something out of their script. This film is currently available to stream on Netflix or to rent on most other streaming services if you are interested.
