Woody Allen - Science Fiction Director?

It's Not As Far-fetched As You Think

There are many science fiction film titans: Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Stanley Kubrick, Christopher Nolan, Alex Garland, the list could go on, but one name that is not included among them is Woody Allen. Perhaps he doesn’t quite deserve to be included on that list, but I think that Allen deserves serious consideration as a science fiction filmmaker, albeit one whose works often cross genres into drama, comedy and romance.

Allen is a prolific writer, actor and director, with a career that spanned more than 60 years and with more than 50 movies under his belt. Allen is perhaps best known for his intellectual, insecure persona in such films such as Annie Hall, Manhattan, Stardust Memories and Hannah and Her Sisters. However, due to the sheer quantity of his output and the variety of his work, he has often strayed away from the New-York-set romantic comedies for which he made his name and delved into the strange waters of science fiction.

Allen’s only true science fiction film is also his deepest exploration of the topic. Sleeper is one of Allen’s ‘early, funny ones,’ an absurd, slapstick adventures where he plays Miles Monroe, a health food store owner who wakes up 200 years in the future. Accompanied by Luna Schlosser (played by Diane Keaton), Allen’s character has to find out what the hell is going on, and free the world from an oppressive futuristic regime. The future in Sleeper is amalgamation of several science fiction films from the 1960s and early 1970s including George Lucas’s THX 1138. 2001: A Space Odyssey is also an obvious inspiration as the film features a sinister android voiced by Douglas Rain who famously voiced HAL 9000. Moreover, Sleeper’s dystopian future also borrows elements from the novels Nineteen-Eighty-Four and Brave New World.

In the film, society is ruled by a mysterious dictator known only as ‘the leader’ an old man dressed in white. In the 200 years that have passed since Allen’s character went to hospital for a routine operation in 1973, the United States was destroyed after a nuclear catastrophe and became a police state. Technology has advanced rapidly and the population are kept obedient with it - they are provided with robot butlers, jetpacks and mysterious pleasure orbs so that they don’t rebel. The government control every aspect of life and track and monitor their citizens extensively. Monroe is woken up from cryo-preservation by the underground resistance because he is an anonymous figure, someone who the regime can’t track, and who they have no records of. He is tasked with bringing down the government which he reluctantly agrees to do, and wacky hijinks ensue.

Sleeper features a lot of great physical comedy in the tradition of Laurel and Hardy or Buster Keaton. Parts of the film are dialogue free, accompanied by a New Orleans Jazz soundtrack, which seems like it doesn’t fit but totally does. This focus on physical comedy such as when Allen attacks a man with a giant strawberry or has to disguise himself as a robot, stems from the fact that the movie was originally meant to be almost totally silent – the initial idea was that in the future society only the rich could afford to talk. Not only is the film funny and fast paced, but there are also plenty of thought-provoking moments too, though never enough to slow the film down. Allen masterfully satirises consumerism, totalitarianism as well as political radicalism. Towards the end of the film as Monroe and Schlosser kidnap ‘the leader’, who at this point consists of just a nose – you’ll have to watch it to believe me – Monroe complains that even though they’ve just brought down the oppressive regime, what replaces won’t be much better as many members of the underground have the same authoritarian instincts. Monroe says that he doesn’t believe in politics or science, to which Schlosser responds by asking him, well what does he believe in. He responds with a typical Allen one-liner ‘Sex and death — two things that come once in a lifetime — but at least after death you're not nauseous.’ The two kiss and the movie ends.

Some of Allen’s other works also use elements of science fiction though it is used much more sparingly than in the full-scale parody Sleeper. Purple Rose of Cairo and Midnight in Paris, use science fiction, or more accurately, fantasy in order to explore concepts like memory, nostalgia and the power of myth. In Purple Rose of Cairo, the main character is a struggling woman called Cecilia trapped in a loveless marriage in the Great Depression. The cinema is the place where she feels happiest and able to escape from the drudgery of everyday life.

One day she’s watching the film ‘The Purple Rose of Cairo’, after seeing it several times in the preceding days, when one of the characters, Tom Baxter, a valiant explorer notices Cecilia. He steps right off of the screen to the amazement of the moviegoers as well as the on-screen characters. The film’s producers are confused as to why one of their characters went from the film world to the real world. The characters in the fictional film on the other hand don’t know what to do as with Baxter gone, they can’t continue performing. What follows is sweet romantic comedy as Cecilia is forced to choose between the fictional Tom Baxter and the actor that plays him Gil Shepherd.

The ending is poignant reflection on the power of films and the realities of Hollywood, which personally hit closer to home since cinemas have been shut down for several months now. Though Allen doesn’t expand on the premise too much, character moving from film to reality could have enormous implications. There is an amusing scene in The Purple Rose of Cairo where the Hollywood lawyer is afraid for Shepherd’s career as his character of Tom Baxter could be killing, raping or robbing people. The film, although short and not particularly deep raises questions about identity which a lot of great sci-fi explores, and highlights Allen’s place as a science fiction film maker.

In Midnight in Paris, time travel is the central element of the film. The main character, Gil Pender, played by Owen Wilson is a nostalgic, romantic writer who visits Paris on holiday with his fiancée. Whilst on an evening walk he sees a 1920s automobile and his encouraged to enter it by the passengers. He emerges in 1920s Paris and meets his literary and artistic idols including Ernest Hemingway, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso. Here, Allen uses science fiction ideas for comedic purposes – he lovingly pokes fun at these cultural icons – but he also uses it to explores Gil’s character. As enamoured Gil is with the past, and as nostalgic he is, eventually, by the end of the film, he learns that the most important thing is to live in the present. Time travel in Midnight in Paris exists to serve the plot, it is not in-depth consideration of concept like H.G Well’s The Time Machine or Shane Carruth’s labyrinthine film Primer, but that it is how I think it should be. Whilst Allen’s use of science fiction might not satisfy hardcore fans of the genre, it is not meant to. Instead, Allen uses it to spice up stories and characters and to drive home his point.

The final film I’ll look at is Allen’s underrated mockumentary called Zelig. In the movie Allen plays a ‘living chameleon’ named Leonard Zelig, a man who tries so hard to fit in that he literally transforms himself. In some of the films funniest and least politically correct sequences Zelig balloons in size when in a room of obese people, darkens his skin when in a room of African Americans and changes his eyes and speaks Mandarin when he is with Chinese immigrants. Zelig is diagnosed with a special disorder and becomes a worldwide phenomenon. The concept is wildly unrealistic of course, another element of science fiction, but Zelig is probably Allen’s best science fiction film. It is a poignant explanation of human natures; how pliable we are and how keen to please. We transform ourselves every day be it on a date or in a job interview, Zelig’s transformations are just more dramatic. In the film’s daring finale, the Jewish Zelig transforms into a Nazi when he listens to one of Hitler’s speeches. Allen’s message here is clear and it is one that is present in Sleeper as well: too much conformity and obedience is dangerous – its end product is fascism. Allen was certainly right on this. In a way, much of his science fiction work has the same anti-totalitarian bent as Orwell’s and like Orwell he happens to be living in a time of resurgent totalitarianism. His book was cancelled by the publisher, his films aren’t distributed in the U.S., and many of the actors he has worked with have publicly denounced him. Perhaps Sleeper and Zelig don’t look like absurd comedies after all.

This article originally appeared in Interkom magazine

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