Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986): USA
Reviewed by Kevin Tran. Viewed on DVD.
As with all of Allen’s best work, the setting of New York City is an important one. Nowhere else in the world can people feel more alone and depressed in huge crowds. It is a place where dreams of being noticed are held in limbo. Where the ruling class is full of (pseudo) intellectuals who read Tolstoy and go to the latest expedition at the MET. Yet there is something about the city, the architecture, the melting pot of culture and people, which brings about an air of romance that is undeniable. Allen relates all of these elements of New York to his characters in Hannah and Her Sisters, which makes them just so incredibly interesting and endearing.
Woody Allen brings to the table his usual charming humor, playing Mickey, a TV producer who is a hypochondriac and fearful of death. His ex-wife is the eldest sister Hannah (Farrow), and now is married to Elliott (Caine), a business manager for rock stars, who’s fooling around with her beautiful sisters Lee, who’s living with Frederik (Max Von Sydow), an older, bitter SoHo artist. The youngest of the trio is Holly (Wiest), an insecure woman and former drug-addict, who changes profession by the day, and resents the most her oldest, most respectable, “perfect” sister, who seems to have everything.
“God, she’s beautiful.” — The first line of Allen’s finely crafted screenplay is the inner voice of a younger Michael Caine, desperately in love of with his wife’s sister at a Thanksgiving dinner party. Allen sets us up for the first of many inner-thoughts of his hopeless Manhattan characters, all whom have some relationship to Hannah and Her Sisters. Although I usually don’t care for the use of voiceovers, as I think of it as a cheap device to reveal character’s mindset, Allen is able to get away with it. Like his film hero, Ingmar Bergman, Allen enjoys dealing with the themes of his films explicitly. In this way, instead of telling a story, he is rather having a conversation with the audience.
The film never really focuses on any one particular character for too long, which is a good thing considering the incredibly talented ensemble cast. Allen blends together his usual themes of love, death, art, the meaningless of life, and the importance of Russian literature. Although each theme probably deserves more delicate treatment, Allen’s comedy blends them all together and creates a most joyous romantic comedy.
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