Experiencing Sleeper in the context of 2024, amidst the prevailing popularity of dystopian narratives, is a unique journey. While most of these narratives paint a grim future under right-wing regimes, few dare to approach dystopia with humour. However, Woody Allen’s 1973 comedy Sleeper stands out as a satirical gem in this genre. It’s not just a satire but a broad comedy that pays homage to Allen’s comedic influences: the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Charlie Chaplin. Sleeper, the second film collaboration between Allen and Diane Keaton, is a must-watch, offering a hilarious dose of slapstick comedy.
Diane Keaton’s performance in Sleeper is a precursor to her later success as a comedienne, particularly in physical comedy. Just a few years after Sleeper, Keaton would establish herself as a comedic powerhouse with Annie Hall, a film loosely based on her. In Sleeper, Allen doesn’t confine Keaton to any established persona. Instead, she adapts her performance to the script, showcasing her versatility and even channelling her inner Harold Lloyd. At 27, Keaton’s youthful beauty adds to the film’s charm, making her presence on screen genuinely breathtaking.
The script of Sleeper, a collaborative effort between Allen and his frequent partner Marshall Brickman, is a masterclass in blending early absurdist tones with Allen’s stand-up comedy, prose, and early films. The result is a unique concoction of one-liners and clever comedy that doesn’t strive for realism or profundity. Instead, Sleeper is a light-hearted yet intellectually stimulating exercise in clever comedy.
Sleeper is set in the year 2173, after a nuclear disaster (initiated by Albert Shanker, president of the United Federation of Teachers….yes, this is a real person), with Allen’s character, Miles Monroe, because woken from a 200-year stint of cryopreservation. Rogue doctors revive him illegally so that he can help the underground resistance, which is looking to overthrow the oppressive police state and its dictator, who is about to set off some nefarious policy known as the “Aries Project.” Miles is chosen because he doesn’t have an identifiable biometric ID, unlike everyone else in this new society. The activist doctors who have melted Miles are captured by the bad guys, and he escapes, pretending to be a butler robot and finds himself delivered to the home of the ridiculous socialist and wannabe poetess Luna Schlosser (Keaton).
What’s so funny about the depiction of the future in Sleeper is that it’s at once bad (not terrible – this film isn’t violent or depressing) but also very stupid. The rich people in this world have robots who serve households. Luna believes Miles is a robot and sets him to work on a pretentious dinner party attended by superficial and snobby party guests, who flock to Keaton because she’s a society queen. Luna is a right-wing supporter of the world order, and when she learns of Miles’ underground activism, she’s horrified and wants to report him. Intent on thwarting this “Aries Project,” Miles kidnaps Luna and takes her on the run.
Like many romantic comedies – though I wouldn’t necessarily consider Sleeper a rom-com – Luna and Miles sorta hate each other. He’s kidnapped her and is dragging her through the forest, and she tries to get him arrested by the oppressive government, even alerting the police, before escaping with him when the police decide she’s a threat and should be disposed of, as well. In a plot shift, Miles is seized by the government and is brainwashed to support the dictator, while Luna finds herself becoming a radical. The film then lurches into what is arguably the funniest sequence in which the two infiltrate the Aries Project – a scary, ominous building hiding an important secret about the dictator. Donned in doctor scrubs, Luna and Miles dash through hallways, avoiding baddies, bickering and sniping at each other along the way.
Sleeper is very funny at times but it also dates in certain places. Also, the growth of dystopic film and television makes the film seem slight and silly, like an inoffensive parody. Also, Allen isn’t looking for emotional truth through comedy in the way he has with films like Annie Hall, Manhattan, or Interiors. Though considered one of his best and a classic, Sleeper is hard to warm up to because it feels like a long-ish comedy sketch at an improv show. The film feels quite shallow.
That being said, the comedy between Keaton and Allen is pretty brilliant. The two performers trade straight-man duties. Allen famously describes himself as the straight man in the comic partnership with Keaton, but in Sleeper, he definitely dominates at times, as well. Keaton’s comedy is also strange to behold because the fluttery dithering and abashed self-deprecation aren’t present. Her Luna is a confident, sleek woman who powers through her scenes.
When we first see Keaton, she looks a fright, and she matches Allen. His face is caked in white pancake makeup, and her face has a bright green facemask. The two make a neat, parallel pair: Not only are their faces covered in paint, but they’re wearing headpieces close to their scalps: Miles, disguised as a robot, is wearing a tight silver mask, while Keaton’s hair is covered by a white headscarf. It’s a fascinating bond implied between the two characters, especially given their vast difference in station: not only is Miles a fugitive (as well as a refugee from the 20th century), but according to Luna, he’s not even human.
This divide continues and is subverted several times throughout the relationship between the two characters. Miles gains the upper hand when he kidnaps the fussy Luna – at one point, even binding and gagging the poor woman. Keaton and Allen play the hell out of these scenes, especially with Keaton embracing Luna’s inherent prickliness and unlikability – she’s not a great person, nor is she appealing like her other famous characters. In fact, even through her redemption when she becomes a freedom fighter, she still maintains her sense of entitlement.
Though the film flags at times, it lifts up to an uproarious ending in which both Allen and Keaton emulate the kind of sparkling comedy from a crack comic duo. Allen has made his appreciation for classic comedy teams quite evident in his work, and the madcap, chaotic slapstick that he and Keaton perform in the Aries Project scene is sheer genius that owes a huge debt to the Marx Brothers.
It’s hard to keep up with the two who seem to continually raise each other to a higher comic level for each scene, whether it’s Allen tumbling down the side of a building, trying to repel off the side, bound by tape, or a scatterbrained Keaton getting consumed by yards and yards of film. The best is when the two perform a ridiculous duet pretending they know how to clone human DNA in front of a panel of bad guys, their physical comedy peerless as they move in stupid harmony beautifully. As Allen’s Miles stammers, desperately improvising scientific gobbledygook, Luna’s doing some hilarious business behind him, darting about the surgical instrument table, plucking items without barely-concealed ineptitude. It’s hard to know who to look at, so it’s worth seeing this scene several times so that both get to be the stars of the scene.
Keaton has another sequence that is important when looking at her comic genius. Earlier in the film, the nonsensical plot had Miles be brainwashed by the corrupt government, only to be rescued by the underground resistance (which now counts the once-snobby Luna as its member). To deprogram him, as if they rescued him from a cult, the group’s leader, Erno (John Beck), suggests that if he and Luna can help Miles regress to who he was before being brought back to life, they may be able to snap him out of his spell. So, Erno’s idea? A particularly heated family dinner in which Goyim Erno and Luna play act a couple straight out of Funny Girl. Luna’s hilariously awful imitation of an overbearing Jewish mother is matched by Erno’s stiff father. Though they’re reenacting this demented tribute to Miles’ Brooklyn childhood in the middle of a field, Erno thoughtfully arranged a set as realistic as he could, even remembering to place a menorah on a side table. The ersatz Neil Simon sorta melts into Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire as Miles suddenly, in a dreamy, woozy haze, starts to recite Blanche’s lines in a flowery southern accent. He’s pretty good, as he launches into one of her fevered monologues. Luna responds with a genuinely heinous interpretation of Stanley Kowalski that would hurt Marlon Brando’s feelings. Though Miles’ rendition of Blanche is pleasantly passable (because he really believes he’s Blanche at the moment), Luna handles her lines and material with a woefully inept grasp of Method clichés. It’s a great scene.
The film stumbles to a happy ending, which is sweet but inconsequential, because, honestly, the script doesn’t really muster much care for the characters. They’re fun to watch because they’re so funny, so it doesn’t really matter if the two get along – in fact, their petty bickering makes it even more amusing than when they’re getting along. In four years, Keaton and Allen will make Annie Hall. Between Sleeper and that film, they’ll make one other film, 1975’s Love and Death, which has a similar high concept (period slapstick set during the Napoleonic Era). Sleeper should be considered the first step in the fruitful cinematic relationship between Diane Keaton and Woody Allen. (Though the two starred in the adaptation of his play Play It Again, Sam, he didn’t direct that film.)
A Seat in the Aisle 
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