The Trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks Review
Woody Allen has been a prolific filmmaker during his career. Over the course of four-plus decades, he has consistently written and directed at least one major motion picture a year, incorporating numerous narrative structures that range from Marx Bothers absurdism, Federico Fellini fantasy-realism and even the more traditional romantic comedy. Despite an oeuvre filled with classics and near classics, however, Allen is still most closely associated with his two masterpieces from the late 1970s, Annie Hall and Manhattan. Those two films cemented his reputation and solidified his own storytelling style that features a neurotic protagonist, sexual and psychological themes and plenty of hilarious one-liners.
The AMC Digital Studios-produced webseries The Trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks is modeled in the same cinematic fashion as Woody Allen’s timeless creations and is as much of a modern interpretation of the Allenesque method as it is homage to both Annie Hall and Manhattan from decades earlier. The narrative focuses on successful playwright Arthur Banks (Adam Goldberg) who, on the brink of the premier of his most recent work, has a handful of unfulfilling relationships with members of the opposite sex. Like numerous Woody Allen characters before him, Banks seeks refuge from his various neurotic ticks with both a psychiatrist (Jeffrey Tambor) and Tony Roberts-like best friend Chandler Brown (Pete Chekvala).
The Woody Allen comparisons begin from the very first moments of The Trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks, with exquisitely filmed black-and-white frames and a jazz-tinged soundtrack invoking the similar cinematographic-style of Manhattan, while the initial introduction of Banks himself finds the character in bed with a seventeen-year-old girl. As the realization of his actions hit him, Banks heads for the bedroom window in order to escape detection by the girl’s father. The centerpiece of Manhattan, meanwhile, features Woody Allen as a forty-two-year-old television writer dating a seventeen-year-old girl portrayed by Mariel Hemingway.
Despite these early similarities between The Trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks and Manhattan, however, the webseries itself has a noticeable Annie Hall vibe to it as well. If there is a defining line in the Woody Allen film, it was Alvy Singer comparing his love life to an old Groucho Marx joke, “I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.” The Trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks has a similar observation that likewise sums up the webseries—“If love is the answer, can you please rephrase the question?”
“Someone once said that you could look at life the same you way you look at eggs,” his psychiatrist tells Arthur Banks. “An optimist is always going to look at the world sunny-side up. And a pessimist—or a latent existentialist—is always going to look at the world as scrambled.”
“Scrambled” is indeed an apt metaphor for the affairs that Banks experiences during the course of the three-episode The Trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks. Despite a normal and seemingly healthy relationship with long-term girlfriend Annette (Wendy Glenn), he refuses to discuss the prospect of having children under the pretext of the deteriorating state of the environment. “Why don’t we ebb our way into it,” he suggests instead. “Get a kitten. Save a kitten, get a kitten with cancer.”
When that relationship crashes and burns—in no small part due to the fact that Banks’ new play is a thinly-veiled critique of their own lives—Arthur Banks finds himself involved with the actress (Laura Clery) cast as the lead in the production. “You don’t find it slightly unhealthy that you’re dating an actress who is essentially playing your ex?” Chandler Brown asks his friend. The over-dramatic hysteria of his new love interest eventually leads Banks to break off the arrangement, but when she comes down with a case of laryngitis, he decides to continue it instead.
“Whether this was a plea for attention or an actual ailment, Arthur was curious about pursuing a relationship with Cornelia,” the narrator (Larry Pine) of the webseries explains. “As long as she was unable to speak.”
Eventually Banks becomes involved with Sophie (Liesl Gaffney Dawson), which turns into another healthy-looking relationship even though the two defer from having sex. Ultimately Arthur Banks is given a choice between the inherent “love” that has developed between the two or the prospect of finally becoming physical. “You have to pick,” she tells him. Obviously scrambled again wins out over sunny-side up.
Many of Woody Allen’s later films contain an offbeat, “happy ending” conclusion despite the many hardships the characters face over the course of the storyline. His 2009 endeavor Whatever Works—featuring the pessimistic and equally neurotic Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld fame—is no exception and contains the line, “Love, despite what they tell you, does not conquer all, nor does it usually last. In the end, the romantic aspirations of our youth are reduced to ‘whatever works.’” In the final scene of The Trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks, the title character arrives at a similar, although unstated, observation, giving the webseries a fitting conclusion while likewise bringing the narrative full circle in the process.
Despite the critical accolades and numerous awards bestowed upon Woody Allen through the years, his films are often low-key affairs of approximately ninety minutes in length that make modest box office revenue. The webseries, meanwhile, is still a narrative medium in its infant stages but offers the same storytelling opportunities as the best large-screen creations of Allen nonetheless. Creator Peter Glanz in essence proves the viability of the webseries with The Trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks—it may be low-key and fail to generate the same kind of money as a traditional television series, but from a quality and entertainment value standpoint, is as much of a success as Annie Hall or Manhattan.
Regardless of how one orders their eggs in the morning.
Anthony Letizia (September 26, 2011)
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