In his immediate reaction to Sweet and Lowdown, Craig thought that the film represents Woody Allen’s apology for the mistreatment of his loved ones. The film explores the funny, absurd, and obsessive nature of artistic genius, the damage a man wrapped up in his art might inflict on those who love him, and the ultimate price he pays for subjecting the world to the whims of his artistic passion.

In an Allen-esque documentary style, the film tells the story of Emmett Ray (Sean Penn), the world’s best guitar player, "except perhaps for Django Reinhardt". Sean Penn is in every way perfect as the quirky, self-worshipping, extravagant musician. Emmett is overconfident in his art excusing his abuses of those around him and yet, he is plagued by his sense of inferiority to the greater master in whose presence he faints. In his introductory scene, Emmett is collecting the slim pickings of his fatally failed pimping effort. He is presented as a low-life manipulator who repulses us in every way, that is until he steps up on the stage and plays the guitar. As a musician, Emmett is a magical blend of precision and free-flowing passion, and the music is a wonderful and wild paean to the jazz and swing guitar. As viewers, our repulsion for Emmett’s drunkenness and insulting womanizing is thrown against the wall of complete awe for his talent. Can we reconcile the two? Can we even forgive one because of the other? Should we try to?

Emmett boasts about his unwillingness to commit to any one woman. For him, women are wonderful as long as they submit to his charisma and remain objects for his amusement and distraction. When he meets Hattie (Samantha Morton), an adorable, but mute laundry woman, he is cruel and unsympathetic to her disability, but he is quick to enjoy her sexually. What was to be a one-night stand during his Florida tour becomes a long-term domestic relationship. In many ways, Hattie is like a devoted puppy. She adores Emmett, but he is so absorbed in worshipping himself and his music that he fails to realize that Hattie is the only woman who has truly and completely loved him because of the music. She endures his insults, and his cheating, and the trips to the dump to shoot the rats because all of that comes with the man who creates such an incredible sound.

Emmett walks out on Hattie in the middle of the night without a word. In a complete departure from his rule, he marries the next woman he meets. Uma Thurman plays Blanche, an alluring daughter of debutante wealth who poses as a writer. She is really on a jag to find men full of danger and power as the source of inspiration for her erotic whimsy and her wanna-be book. Blanche doesn’t really care about Emmett’s music as much as she cares about exploring Emmett as a low life, weird phenomenon. Of course as soon as the patina of strangeness wears thin, Blanche finds another more dangerous and exotic man. The marriage ends in a hilarious fit of jealousy, and Emmett finds his way back to Hattie hoping to pick up their affair from where he left it.

In a poignant ending, Emmett is brought to the heart of his self-serving illusion, and the pain he has caused others by indulging it. As important as music has been to him, he is forced to see that, after all, music isn’t enough. But, Emmett is caught in a classic Allen-esque paradox; because of the way he’s lived, music is all that’s left.