Review of Husbands and Wives (1992) by Paul Z — 30 Aug 2008

The first scene of Husbands and Wives, one of Woodyâ??s very most insightful and deeply reflective films, is a lengthy, uninterrupted documentary-style shot. Carlo Di Palmaâ??s camera is more than simply mocking the documentary feel, but being very sensitive, absorbing the charactersâ?? feelings and reflecting them, agitatedly whip-panning around the apartment to capture the proceedings as two long-married middle-aged couples handle the news that one couple, played with great intensity by the wonderful Judy Davis and director of powerhouse melodrama They Shoot Horses, Donâ??t They? Sydney Pollack, has made a decision to get divorced. This sort of take can be executed with a visual style that is as smooth as you like, but Woody is all about character, and thus perceives them in a a shuddering, bothered manner, a cameraman as baffled as the characters, who continually cut each other off and reject what they are told.

Pollack and Davis are divorcing, but they are the ones who are calm and sensible. They intend their separation an good-natured effort to give each other room to breath, which in the expression of Woody Allenâ??s overanxious, delusional characters, that is naturally more crucial than to commit to someone else, to find middle ground, to compromise for them. This ironically is an overwhelming jolt and a neurotic threat to the other couple, of course played by Woody Allen and Mia Farrow.

What Woody tries to say with this subtly humorous but overall somber outing is that many relationships are not as enduring or resilient as one would generally imagine them to be, as the id of your average person is a self-centered whore craving the spotlight. We give and take, and we say things to warm our loversâ?? hearts, but how much of it is purely out of love for them and not out of the expectation of being gratified? Thatâ??s why Pollack winds up living with a sexy aerobics instructor twenty years younger than him, so he can recapture the youth he feels he gave up for Davis, who herself gives, as is typical of her, fascinating, inviting, becoming, and infatuating performance, overall the highlight of the film. Thatâ??s also why Woody, a fiftysomething English professor, is attracted to his young student, Juliette Lewis in her best performance next to, dare I mention in the same review as a Woody Allen movie, Natural Born Killers. Woody is blind to her pattern of hung-up attachment to older men, propelled by the wild mirage of romantic sanctuary.

Though Davis is the focal feature, the most powerful scenes are between Allen and Farrow, who radiate with real experience and seasoning of having before in pivacy late at night talked about just what their characters talk about, like trust, fidelity, and what they really want, slithering warily around the proximity projectiles of intimacy and sexual desire. The remarkable lack of amiability in Farrowâ??s character is one of Woodyâ??s most insightfully written in memory, a passive-aggressive, side-stepping woman who controls her own advantages by subtle and indirect means, which dawn upon only people who have passed through her life.

What with which Woody at this point in his career had come to a peak of wrestling, underneath the ineffective perseverance of all the older characters, is the apprehension that life is passing, time never slows down, life dangles a romantic illusion in front of you and frames you with realityâ??s answer to it.