Woody Reality

I think Woody Allen is making meta-meta commentary on the film industry as a whole, not just from the perspectives of producers, but of even the film going populous.  I don't think Woody Allen was trying to make a banal movie, and I don't think he thinks movies are meant for people to just walk into and "be entertained" by.  If he did that and thought that, then he would have just made a banal "entertaining" movie and finally found some actual, lasting, tangible mainstream success.

The scene in question I chose to examine shows our main character played by Owen Wilson puttering through an art gallery with his wife-to-be, and the man she's been crushing on for years.  This is a man that appears to have a very developed mind and knowledge of the art culture and history.  His words are dogma.  His follower will stand and listen to this man without questioning him once.  This man is the person who hopelessly tries to make the world around him seem three dimensional for nothing but his own benefit, which at first seems like a commentary on the pointlessness of analyzing film, until it is taken into the account that this man is a narrative antagonist.

Owen Wilson tries to pop up with a differing opinion and gets shushed, again, demonstrating the reaction of many when one stands against someone who's opinion is already readily accepted.

Owen Wilson's character tries once more and succeeds in stating his point, stating items that aren't accepted as facts because he has an insight to the happenings that nobody else does.  In this case, Owen Wilson could simply be a rival person with an opinion, but I think it's Woody Allen speaking from his perspective as a creator to make a meta-metaobservation.  He has insight to the intentions and meanings of his own film that we cannot hope to know, like Owen Wilson with his travels to the past, but like Owen, even if Woody presented them, it would not be able to invalidate other analysis that were already presented.  All he could do is come out, state his point, put his hands in his pockets and walk away, like in the scene.  The antagonist character isn't going to stop being a pedantic douche, the film industry isn't going to change.  He knows what he means, and people are going to talk about it, and the very fact that somebody talks about it is proof enough that film isn't just about walking in an being entertained by something mindless.

The illusion is not embraced so much as it is accepted as an inevitability.  But it's okay because there will always be people standing in front of the art and commenting on it, so even if it's Tyler Perry's Perpetuating African American Stereotypes or one of local Gainesville legend Tom Miller's butt print paintings, where the meaning is meant to be absent, people will apply meaning to it anyway.  The illusion only stays because analysis is more readily acceptable if a film is meant to seem like something deeper, where this movie is not meant to be that.  It's meant to be dug into and have meaning affixed to it.