Barbara Gancia missed too much English classes - Woody Allen will probably forgive her. But should we?

Every columnist published in the mainstream was compelled to write about the latest Woody Allen's film. How to stand out in the sea of opinions?

Brazilian Barbara Gancia picks her formula: she calls the ingenious director a damned impostor ('farsante maldito'). And she meant it.

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Barbara Gancia é tresloucada ao chamar Woody Allen the 'farsante maldito', em artigo publicado na Folha e na Epoca. Ela ainda escreve que o renomado autor da matéria de capa da Newsweek (com Allen), 16.7, "desceu a lenha tanto no artista quanto no homem", quando Tanenhaus faz justamente o contrário - é elogioso a ponto de se referir a Allen como o único herdeiro de Charles Chaplin. Definitivamente, Barbara assim deixou prova de que não tem competência para ler textos em inglês. Este nosso artigo em inglês sairá também em português, em breve.
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Doing much worse than anything like photoshopping a public figure, Barbara, what damned words, proved lazy besides immature. And left us here assured she badly lacks English reading skills.

She signed "Woody Allen me pegou na curva" (something like Woody Allen took me by surprise), published in Epoca and Folha de S. Paulo earlier this month. It can be realized through her writing that she found impetus to curse Woody after misreading Sam Tanenhaus's cover article (Newsweek 16/7). In addition to poor reading, Barbara seemed unware of how childish her long expression of anger over being 'taking the wrong clues' sounds.

We learn Barbara messed up Tanenhaus's article from this part of hers:
'li um texto.. que era de uma crueza inédita, parecia quase um acerto de contas de tão ácido. Descia a lenha tanto no artista quanto no homem.' In our English version, that would read like, ' I read an article... which was blunt as no other, as if - acid as it went - the author was getting even with Allen, as he rundowned both the artist and the man.

Read that Newsweed article and see for yourself that Tanenhaus does just the opposite; he praises Allen.

The lazy can be mistaken by the second title:' The legendary filmmaker returns to his old obsessions-sexual avarice and megalomaniacal control.'  The negative terms refer to the fiction, the characters. Those devaluating words make the unskilled overlook 'legendary', which refers to Allen himself.

In the text, Tanenhaus writes, ' [he] will brusquely dismiss established stars..if they fail to meet his exacting standards... But monomania has made him.. the one true heir of Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton.' (highlight is ours)

Thus Barbara has no grounds to have written that Tanenhaus rundows the artist. The man? Neither does she. Barbara madly affirms that Allen is just like Lester, the character of Crimes and Misdemeanors who, she puts it, 'does not show the least embarrassment as he steps on others.' Tanenhaus does not share that opinion at all.

When he refers to that character, he is not talking about the man, but is explaining Allen's technique of 'misdirection', a term by the very Allen, who leads "the audience to believe something, but the movie is really going to be about something else' (Tanenhaus citing Allen). We then read in Newsweek that

There is similar “misdirection” in Crimes and Misdemeanors—perhaps the last of Allen’s great New York films. The character most like him isn’t the glum, moralizing documentary filmmaker played by Woody. It’s the vulgar, preening, power-mad TV mogul played by Alan Alda, who barks “ideas” into the portable tape recorder he pulls out of his pocket, much as the young Woody Allen, his motor always running, would interrupt a conversation to scribble one-liners. (highllight is ours)


Tanenhaus, as any reader of English can find for herself/himself, does not point the negative behaviors Barbara does, but selects another feature of the character that could remind Allen. Barbara, rather, accuses Allen of being Lester in what she finds worse, and delirously manipulates her 'noble' readers by asking, 'O nobre leitor está lembrando dele'? (Does the noble reader remember him (Lester)?) And finalizes to deserve -she- the Lester-like mask, 'Quando alguém poderia pensar que o Lester é o verdadeiro Woodoy Allen'? (Who could have thought that Lester is the real Woody Allen?).

To make the last of Barbara's brick fall, let us add that Tanenhaus is complimentary about such misdirection technique, and is not fool or ignorant about Allen's characters to assert that certain characters are wholly like Allen:
[Allen} is ingeniously in his subtle mixing of autobiography and invention...

So as it goes, Tanenhaus and Barbara departure taking opposing directions. While Tanenhaus sees it as 'good' that Allen is to shoot next in San Francisco, pondering praisingly that 'his exile has lasted long enough', Barbara  wishes the director an acid 'good luck with his partnerships with tourism secretariats of cities around the world', suggesting he is purely opportunistic and greedy. And shuts her torrent of errors and nonsense by evoking Allen with her those two dirty, unfair pieces: 'damned impostor'.

Her colleague Contardo Calligaris, in his today's column in Folha, adds a note registering his annoyance and confusion with the fact that Barbara Gancia has recently attributed to him something he did not write, made very negative remarks mistankingly addressing Calligaris.

Barbara must take English. Above all, ought to take her ground back; we assume she once had it.