Magic in the Moonlight

Woody Allen – 2014 – England

I have to admit, reluctantly, that Magic in the Moonlight is my favorite of all Woody Allen’s films from the 21st century phase of his career.  It’s no more ambitious or substantial than some of his others but I think it’s the most honest and challenging.  (And I say that in spite of the infuriating fact that Allen continues to shamelessly present drastic age-gaps between lovers as charmingly normal instead of creepy.)  Colin Firth plays a 1930s stage magician who is also a famous debunker of clairvoyants.  A friend persuades him to apply his skepticism to a young American psychic who so far has stumped critics.  Allen’s penchant for whimsy and magical realism serve a special function in this unique film, because we reasonably expect something to happen along the lines of The Purpose Rose of Cairo (1985) or the more recent To Rome with Love (2012), and yet Allen willfully darts in another direction at a key juncture that makes everything startlingly profound when it could have otherwise and easily been a cop-out.  Coming from the maker of such philosophically nihilistic statements as Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Match Point (2005), a man whose reprehensible personal life has left him zero credibility except as a film director, Magic in the Moonlight is a curious and successful exploration of magic’s definition and appeal, and daringly suggests that magic does indeed exist, except not in the parlors and on stages, but in the hearts of people willing to accept love when it finds them.