By Woody Allen, 1971.
Starring Woody Allen, Louise Lasser, Carlos Montalbán, Jacobo Morales.
Rating: 8/10, 7/10.
Gah. Is it possible to say anything meaningful about Bananas?
The movie is set against a backdrop of rebellion in South America, as well as idealistic American activism, but to think that it cares at all about politics is a bit of a stretch. It cares much more about the ridiculous situation of having Woody Allen as the leader of that rebellion, about spot-on parodies of the news media’s presentation of themselves, about a new brand of cigarettes endorsed by the Church. Like the best of the Marx Brothers movies (and Allen, though he rarely reminds us explicitly anymore, is in many ways the late-20th century Groucho Marx), Bananas is so extremely slapstick as to become surrealist, in form and perhaps even in philosophy.
How many movies interrupt themselves right at the climax (if you can call it that) with an unrelated COMMERCIAL? How many end as anti-climactically (pun pun pun!) and tangentially as this, and yet how many end having come so perfectly full-circle? How many, by 1971, had this much silent, purely physical comedy? How many can pull off several jokes whose punchlines we know practically before the joke starts?
I’m an admirer of the film, if it was unclear. My favorite part was the bit where Allen, coming out of his apartment building, guides a parallel parking car, waving it on, saying "Good, good, you’re clear," that sort of thing, until it backs into the car in back of it. Allen gives the driver a thumbs up or a "perfect" or something of the sort, and then walks on. He does not know the driver. We never see the driver. Nothing ever comes of this. It relates to nothing else in the film. It is genius. And in a lot of ways, this film is one in which any individual moment reflects the movie as a whole. Thus: Nothing ever comes of ANYTHING in the movie. Nothing relates to anything else. One could even say that the film does not know the driver. It never sees the driver. It is genius.