"You know what you are? You're God's answer to Job, y'know? You would have ended all argument between them. I mean, He would have pointed to you and said, y'know, ' do a lot of terrible things, but I can still make one of these.'You know? And then Job would have said, 'Eh. Yeah, well, you win.'"
They say art imitates life. This is so in MANHATTAN, another walk in the park for Woody Allen. In it, Allen is Isaac Davis, a 42-year-old man dating a high schooler, but who falls in love with his best friends mistress. All this takes place while his ex-wife (a very young Meryl Streep) is publishing a memoir about how her life with Isaac drove her to lesbianism.
Allen has never been an actor with wide range. He's always the neurotic, from CASINO ROYALE in 1967 to his most recent film, SCOOP (which nobody saw, but I really liked). His personality has always carried over into his characters, and his movies have been shaped around his persona. I'm completely fine with this though, because the man is so damn funny, both in life and in his films (his writing and acting are for the most part comic gold). Perhaps MANHATTAN was a pre-cursor to his split with Mia Farrow, one of his most frequent collaborators, for 27-year-old Soon Yi Previn in 1997 (he is thirty-five years old than her).
In both his life and the film, Woody looks, and eventually finds in a way, love in the oddest places. In a way, the movie is as much about his love for his home town (ahem, Manhattan) as his love/frustration with the people around him. The film is gorgeously shot in old-school black-and-white, with many wide shots showing how life beyond the camera is always happening in New York.
Allen has never been an actor with wide range. He's always the neurotic, from CASINO ROYALE in 1967 to his most recent film, SCOOP (which nobody saw, but I really liked). His personality has always carried over into his characters, and his movies have been shaped around his persona. I'm completely fine with this though, because the man is so damn funny, both in life and in his films (his writing and acting are for the most part comic gold). Perhaps MANHATTAN was a pre-cursor to his split with Mia Farrow, one of his most frequent collaborators, for 27-year-old Soon Yi Previn in 1997 (he is thirty-five years old than her).
In both his life and the film, Woody looks, and eventually finds in a way, love in the oddest places. In a way, the movie is as much about his love for his home town (ahem, Manhattan) as his love/frustration with the people around him. The film is gorgeously shot in old-school black-and-white, with many wide shots showing how life beyond the camera is always happening in New York.
I'm not sure which aspect of the film made me really love it. It is an odd romance, not only in the characters but in the interactions they share with each other. Nevertheless, the characters feel real, in a surreal, neurotic, Woody-ish way. It is shot beautifully and the actors all go subtley go for broke. Maybe it is such a great, affecting, hilarious look at romance because it has all the right amounts of all the right pieces.
A
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