Magic in the Moonlight
  

Director: Woody Allen
Writer: Woody Allen
Cast:

• Colin Firth — Stanley Crawford
• Emma Stone — Sophie Baker
    
• Eileen Atkins — Aunt Vanessa
• Hamish Linklater — Brice Catledge
• Simon McBurney — Howard Burkan

Sony Pictures Classics: 2014

Answering the above question to our purpose here, love, especially, is the answer; a love story. Magic in the Moonlight is a fine, sweet romance which has a straightforward intellectual architecture — the latter quite rare in any creative work.

In the opening scenes we're shown the milieu of gaudy and hectic Berlin of 1928. Our leading man (Colin Firth as Stanley Crawford, cynical) grew up practicing sleight-of-hand card tricks. Now he is a professional stage magician, quite successful, entertaining big-city audiences with jumbo extravaganzas. An old friend, a fellow magician, visits him to present a more subtle challenge. There is a young woman seer (Emma Stone as Sophie Baker, luminescent) down on the French Riviera, able to tell people things that no outsider possibly could know. The friend confesses himself unable to catch her out; would Stanley take some time to see her in action, investigate her claims?

In striking contrast to Berlin with large, enthusiastic audiences at theater distances, we move to the peaceful landscape of the Riviera, with only a handful of people involved, Sophie in face to face conversations. What can such simple, intimate encounters in the lovely Azure Coast countryside allow for even an expert to analyze and debunk? These are not theatrical tricks. Can Stanley's experience and deep insight into truth and illusion discern whatever is happening here?

From the movie's title we might anticipate that there's a lot of romantic sitting under the full moon — and we will be surprised by the end to realize this isn't so. Yet whether day or night, the entire movie somehow is suffused with moonlight. What does this mean? Well, therein lies its magic.
  

Throughout, the movie plays fine music of the period. Its lyrical overture is the carefully chosen, entrancing love song by Cole Porter, "You Do Something to Me". I had enjoyed this song before, at various times. I never felt it so intimately as I do now, with Magic in the Moonlight become the springboard for my continuing fascination. Sung beautifully during the opening credits, it defines and deepens the seemingly clear and transparent scenes developing in front of us.
  

What is the structural strength of this film, what is it built upon? Its philosophy, if you will? Beneath the romance's warm and musical surface, the foundation is Nietzschean. This is, to say the least, unusual. Offering this gift is rarely attempted, as is receiving it in the spirit intended. Many millions of people have encountered some of the philosophy illuminated in Friedrich Nietzsche's books, reading casually or even carelessly. Far fewer have read with patient attention and thoughtful reflection. Such close reading qualities in the reader or observer, desirable for any sophisticated works, are invaluable regardless of one's agreement in whole or part.

As Woody Allen holds in his hands both the writing and directing of Magic in the Moonlight, we trust he is not playing mere sleight-of-hand card tricks with his main story-line. Rather, his film’s brilliant presentation is just what he aimed for; hence our experience is as magically romantic as we allow it to be.

Among the felicities here I want to specify a handful. (Other viewers may choose differently.) In the staging of Magic in the Moonlight, we may discern briefly-presented Nietzschean concepts, each thematically pivotal:

Not all of these entries are attributed, and I've made my list deliberately allusive and elliptical, but each is important. The offhand opening of this Nietzschean sequence will be taken by many viewers as a summary of Nietzsche's analyses in entirety, popularly encapsulated in philosophy's unkindest cut: Nietzsche's prophetic judgement, God is dead. Embracing the conventional simplification of an enormous complex of ideas, Stanley likely considers this the bare bedrock of cynicism, upon which he may safely build his life. But then — we slip forward into surprising territory. Emma's spiritual gifts are not something he believes in, or can believe in. In a word, uncanny. Henceforth their intertwined paths forward seem tangled, fitful, uncertain.

Really, though, the plot's sequenced elements are not hidden. The psychological markers are of varying explicitness but increasing precision. These are neither narrative flaws nor ostentatious frosting. They are precisely what the movie is about. The encounters embodied in their diverse scenes hint at grand concepts behind them. They focus here on the growth of character, even influence it; and hence the flow of plot. That is, how the movie works its magic: leading us to what, upon subtle reflection, moonlight shows us.

You do not need to see or agree with any of this philosophical framework to enjoy the movie. Yet if you do see it, you’ll better appreciate how overcoming even an entire series of obstacles strengthens us for learning and sharing love, beautifully enticing as we see it.

At its deepest level, we may deem Magic in the Moonlight a creator's film, for creators. But staying with what we see, it's a movie of self-aware professional magicians. The interplay between Stanley and Sophie is delightful: a give-and-take of curiosity and wonder, challenge and repartee, attraction and reluctance, flirtation and perception. In both its reflective depth and moonlit humanity the movie inherently is for any and all lovers, for all of us.

Thus we may choose to perceive that moonlight is the magic. A lovely movie; a superb romantic-philosophical presentation.

  
© 2024 Robert Wilfred Franson