Review of Manhattan (1979) by Alex T — 23 Nov 2011

I always feel smarter when I watch a watch a Woody Allen movie, maybe it?s that pseudo intellectual New York, Jewish, left-wing, liberal, Central Park West, Brandeis University, the socialist summer camps and the father with the Ben Shahn drawings mentality that I have.

Allen takes Manhattan and not only inserts gorgeous black and white shots of its building and its skyline and its bridges and its people but he also transforms Manhattan into a character in this film by giving it Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue? as theme music.

The film opens up with Allen?s oh so familiar neurotic voice as he is planning out a book with a forceful nature like a jungle cat behind those black rimmed glasses. Just like in Annie Hall we see characters in a sort of identity crises or at least crises in their relationships.

The characters don?t know who they want to be with and how to make any relationship work. The movie goes through a series of divorces and affairs and sexual exploration, even pedophilia with a 17 year old high school student.

Allen looks more comfortable with the 17 year old because of his intellectual dominance but uneasy about her age. But all these relationships along with the love that is in them are not as simple as the overpowering soundtrack suggests.

The complexities of all the relationships even the nonsexual ones are what makes Manhattan so different than Annie Hall, in which at the end of Annie Hall you know they break up but there is growth, but for Manhattan it ends in mistakes and revelations but no real growth, and that?s my only problem with this movie the end falls short of expectations.