Jayclops' musings on his favorite pasttime and escape.
Love, (complicated) actually
August 6, 2007Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)
Indeed, watching Manhattan feels like an extension or rather a different perspective of viewing the Annie-Alvy dynamics. This time we see various relationships in their rapturous beginnings (like that sweet nothings whispered in the splendid background of the infamous bridge) and lonely endings. I am tempted into thinking about Closer but while Nichols showed the gloomy and vengeful side of the complexity of relationships, Manhattan is suffused with no-nonsense hilarity thanks to Allen’s genius in concocting dialogues full of intellectual ruminations on film, religion, and yes, even falling in and out of love. And you thought discussing it with a seventeen-year old girl is awkward especially if your 42 and a shimmering cap of scalp is screaming right at the top of your head. 
The Zafra synopsis was quick to point out the George Gershwin score as an astounding clue, one that could really make you clinch the which-one-is-which dilemma, given that you knew who Gershwin is. Mr. Gershwin, aside from his musical acclaim, is the one responsible for putting up the orchestra sound that opens up the film carefully melding into the different scenes of New York in black and white. Woody Allen’s reluctant but familiar voice would soon enter the background amidst the early morning fog, traffic and the usual hustle-and-bustle of New Yorkers. He was saying something about Chapter One, the book he is supposed to write about moral decadence in the urban setting. He never finishes a complete thought that would ultimately give us the book’s idea but such uncertainty will provide the fitting orientation into the mess that is Isaac (Allen).
While cringing at the thought of the publication of a book which chronicles the break-up of his marriage with her lesbian ex wife (Meryll Streep), he tries to recover and mask his self-doubt by having an affair with a seventeen year-old girl Tracy (Mariel Hemingway). When he meets with Mary (Diane Keaton) the woman his married best friend Yale (Michael Murphy) is trying to hook up with, the wounded opposites attract and not long after we see Woody spiraling yet again in another emotional rollercoaster. The situations and emotions hit the ground and it hits us because of how real these situations play out. And we laugh incredulously at the comedy of our own childlike immaturity, indecision and insecurities.
We know that the complex situations would go nowhere by normal-people standards and the exposition of the stereotypical attachments to each character would, in the same way, mirror our own. The concluding scene, where Isaac runs to catch the girl before she boards off to London (when she was previously being shooed off by Woody’s character), will probably invite us to respond differently, and reckoning from Woody’s strokes on love, we shake our heads at this complicated, complicated world.
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