Emmett Ray is the main character of Woody Allen’s masterpiece called “Sweet and Lowdown.” The movie strikes with its deep psychological development of the characters. Woody Allen sticks with his typical manner of choosing the most unusual personality kinds to portray in his movies. The character of Emmett is fascinating to explore because his mind is twisted and complicated; he is full of complexes and psychological disorders.
The lives of the heroes of the film are very interesting to observe due to their multiple imperfections. It is a well-known fact that most people have many different symptoms of personality disorders. Some of us are obsessive cleaners, some are nervous eaters, some lose their sleep due to anxiety, all of us have phobias and irrational fears, bad habits, sometimes we act on an impulse, and we get attached to patterns. All of these things are typical for every human being.
This is why seeing movie characters, which possess the same traits, and watching how these features influence the lives of people in the film, is so interesting for us. Emmett Ray seems to have developed a whole range of various disorders and behavioral patterns. He is on the stage when the impulses and habits directly influence his life and relationships with other people. He is on the stage when he does not have the disorders, but the disorders have him.
One of the first features of Emmett Ray we see is kleptomania, which is nothing else but an impulse control disorder, the person fails to fight a tempting desire to do something, take something, have something or shoot something. Besides, Emmett’s behavior has the traits of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which I would classify as a problem because of the character’s age. Ray is always on the go, always socializing, he loves attention, he is addicted to attention, compliments, and appreciation.
According to what he says about his relationship with his father, I would think, Emmett might have a father complex, which makes this man always seek for some external source of self-esteem. His identity and self-perception are dictated by the amount of appreciation he is given.
During the periods when he lacks public attention, he gives the appreciation to himself. To my mind, this is a symptom of the so-called “father hunger” that happens when the person’s father archetype is damaged or missing in their childhood. The person with this disorder tends to look for the father figure for themselves.
In some cases, such people find this image internally. I think this is what Emmett did for himself, and this explains his patronizing behavior in the relationship with Hattie and all the multiple gifts he buys for her even though he is short on money. Ray’s love to stare at the moving trains reminds me of a symptom of obsessive compulsive disorder, when a mind gets stuck in a repetitive pattern.
Another serious problem Emmett is dealing with is his anxiety. Certain fears build up in his mind until he feels about to explode with the nervous tension. Emmett’s way out of such situations is drinking alcohol. This helps him calm down and relax; it puts his mind off the problems that make him nervous. This is, for sure, a wrong method of treatment, because as a result of his frequent alcohol consumption, Ray has developed an addiction.
Emmett percepts himself as a star, he likes to wear expensive and noticeable clothes, he likes to stand out, surprise and put up a show. Though, after a while, most people start seeing his real self, his miserable and pathetic personality. People do not take him seriously as a man or as a personality; to them, he is a genius musician, who is nobody when he comes off the stage. To my mind, Emmett is aware of his failures, yet he does not like to admit them, so he makes up stories where he features like a decent and admirable guy.
Ray’s relationship with Hattie works out because she is mute and she is mesmerized by his music. She is a perfect companion for Emmett because he likes to talk and put an impression on people, and she is so easily impressed. Even with his fear of commitments, Emmett gets attached to Hattie.
He leaves her, escaping while she sleeps without saying a word not because he cares about the relationship being one-sided, but because people like him are always in search of someone to impress, with Hattie this became too easy and he got bored, he went on looking for more adventures and met a woman, who got bored of him. When he realized that with Hattie, he had a maximum of harmony and understanding that he could ever have with any other person, he came back for her to find out that she already was married.
In the end, Emmett cries out that he has made a mistake and breaks his guitar. This means that he realized the importance of human companionship and understanding, which he never experienced before Hattie. After he has acknowledged that, he realized the meaning of feelings and he started to combine them with his talent of a musician, this is why his music became more beautiful.