Review of Manhattan (1979) by Josh S — 05 Aug 2010

This is really excellent. A lot of people like to say that this is Woody Allen's best movie, and while I do still like The Purple Rose of Cairo and Radio Days and Annie Hall, in some ways, I see what they mean.

Certainly it's his best movie visually: the black-and-white cinematography by Gordon Willis is justifiably famous. Especially interesting is the very dark scene in the planetarium, when the characters are frequently seen only in silvery outline.

The story is in some ways typical Woody Allen stuff: intellectual New Yorkers having existential angst and relationship problems. But it just has more resonance here than in something like Whatever Works or even Hannah and Her Sisters.

Where Hannah and Her Sisters followed about six different characters around more or less equally, this movie focuses in on just the one Woody Allen character and his relationships with two other characters.

Mariel Hemingway got an Oscar nomination for playing his seventeen-year-old girlfriend (yes, it's creepy, but at the same time, she seems to be much more mature than him, which makes it more tolerable).

Hemingway is really excellent, making simple lines like "Now I don't feel so good," and "You have to have a little faith in people" very poignant and memorable. Diane Keaton, of course, plays the woman closer to Allen's own age who he starts to have an affair with; she makes the character both annoying and somewhat pitiable.

A young Meryl Streep is also in it as Allen's ex-wife who turned out to be a lesbian, but the scenes with her are mostly just there for comic relief and don't impact the rest of the story as much.

There's also the famous score, taken entirely from George Gershwin music, which at times, together with the cinematography, makes the movie seem like a postcard for New York. It's very much worth seeing.