Film: Manhattan

Director: Woody Allen
Genre: Comedy 
Source: USA (1979)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Netflix Streaming
Grade: B+

"I finally had an orgasm, and my doctor said it was the wrong kind."

"You had the wrong kind? I've never had the wrong kind. Ever. My worst one was right on the money."

It's easy to see now why my first tastes of Woody Allen left me flat, and why now I find myself in the middle of a growing appreciation of his subtlety, his lack of subtlety, and the ways he has changed and grown over the years as a filmmaker. I loved Midnight in Paris and really liked Match Point, Scoop, and Vicky Christina Barcelona, all of which have found him getting outside of himself a little bit more (though maybe not Midnight in Paris) and exploring some different character types. But those characters are all still mixed up in their own sexual dysfunction, egomania, and intelligence to varying degrees--in other words, those same concepts that Allen has been exploring since the beginning.

Older Allen films have all that plus a heavy dose of self-loathing and neuroticism, but they also have an honesty to them that is both sweet and sad. Isaac, Woody Allen's character in Manhattan, for example, is searching for love, torn between the seventeen-year-old (yikes) actress/schoolgirl

he's been having an affair with and a desire for something more real. Isaac is an aspiring writer, and the film opens with his rewrites of the opening lines of his novel, trying to explain a love/hate relationship with the titular city that in some ways reflects the divide he feels within as well. Isaac wants a relationship, but he blames the failures of his past on others, and seems glib and unconcerned about the ramifications of dating a woman/girl 25 years younger than himself of falling for his best friend's mistress. He leaves the girl to develop a relationship with the mistress, and when she goes back to his friend, he returns to the teenager, begging her not to go on a study trip to London he had previously encouraged her to enjoy. That desperate and somewhat pathetic selfishness is both sad and comedic, as Isaac (we hope) is given an opportunity to grow up a little. Of course the film ends before that growth is achieved, a kind of in media res ending that I found myself really pleased with.

All this drama (and often unexpectedly clever dialogue, as seen above) is played out in beautiful black and white as Allen seems to be channeling the Manhattan of the films he fell in love with. He's playing with film tropes of the 40s--the classical soundtrack, even "silent" gags and montages as he takes his son out for an afternoon with shots that seem to evoke Chaplain or Keaton--even while he's showing us light and shadow in wholly new ways as well. A trip to the planetarium, for example, features back-lit and silhouetted figures against a field of stars, a thin strip of light illuminating their profiles, from Allen's trademark glasses to strands of Diane Keaton's hair. The wonderful experimental and assured and homaged feel of it all somehow fits together, and the film becomes a slice of life that is familiar and recognizable even while being nothing like my day-to-day life. The whole thing works, even when I feel like it shouldn't. Like the quote at the top of the entry, I get the feeling Allen is just happy to be playing with film, and even when he gets things wrong, he doesn't care because he's having such a fine time it somehow turns out right.

I get that Woody Allen movies aren't for everyone, and not all Woody Allen movies are for me. But I'm enjoying my forays into his filmography, and this one was a really satisfying cinematic experience.

Alternate Film Title: "Wherein Apparently Everyone Is Cool with Dating a Seventeen-Year-Old"