March 20, 2007	Tuesday	Safar 30, 1428

LONDON: Woody Allen is moving on again. His last two films were funded and shot in the UK, but now he’s picking up his camera and heading to Spain. Woody, we’re told, is attracted to Spain as a vibrant culture that has produced film-makers such as Pedro Almodóvar.

Maybe Allen should remember that Spain is also the home of Don Quixote, the comic knight who fought the battles of an age long since passed.

There is something sad about the Woody of today. That face was never meant to age. His screen persona, the klutzy little guy who usually got the girl, was a powerful one. It’s painful to look at the wrinkles and the stoop of his shoulders. It’s not just the movie stars who cannot age with dignity; it’s anyone the camera has turned into an icon.

Allen was slow to come to terms with his age. Until recently, a succession of young female leads were cast opposite him until the audience no longer hoped for a happy ending, but instead wanted to scream: “Leave her alone, grandad!” The old shtick had seen him through the earlier, funnier films and the more reflective films of his middle period, but it just wouldn’t work as he reached his later years.

But perhaps the saddest thing is to see a great artist such as Allen cut off from a sense of place. Allen is an artist whose entire art is drawn from a few blocks of upper Manhattan.

An artist may love a place, but, equally, a sense of hatred may lead to creation. Nobel winner Elfriede Jelinek seems to despise Austria and her native Austrians for what she sees as their barely concealed fascism and misogyny, yet she is driven to write about them again and again. Without Austria and Jelinek’s hatred for it, there would be no art. I can’t imagine she would have much to say about the people of Texas or Hong Kong; that’s one of the things that makes her a great artist. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service