Annie Hall is one of those movies that are a bit difficult to describe to anyone. It's a typical movie for its period and it captures perfectly the style and emotionality of New York at the time. It's an ode to the most uncertain of ages, when Gods fell and skyscrapers rose, and relationships, well relationships were still pretty much the same.
Woody Allen is one of my favourite actors and directors. In this movie he portrays a rogue comedian, by the name of Alvy Singer, who falls in and out and generally struggles with coming to terms with what could very well be the love of his life. The film moves frantically between the different settings of periodic trends, the cafes, the movie theatres, the bars and clubs. For a city that doesn't sleep Woody Allen's New York is an insomniac, starved for rest, constantly on the verge of a nervous collapse.
Diane Keaton stars as the movies' namesake Annie Hall, a leading role she won an Oscar for, and although I'm not a believer in Oscars, she very much deserved this one. Hers is a brilliant impersonation of a woman, left barren and un-excitable, by the sexual revolution, by the expectations of a higher love that never came, a revolution that came and went.
Their story is a strange one to say the least but not as strange or as unbelievable as anyone else's, it's much like anyone else's life, with its highs and lows, dreams and aspirations, although you had to be there to truly experience it and that's what Allen gives us. The feeling that we were there in those particular years of a very human, despite an inherently chaotic, history of a city, that never sleeps, where in the pauses between the heaths of nausea weakness and distraught, people may still even if for a short while love each other.
Weather you want to believe that the phobias and insecurities of Allen's character are namely his own, how much of what you see is autobiographical or not, it's an enticing and mesmerizing story. Allen himself has claimed in his latter years that the neurotic and damn near agoraphobic character he created was just that, a character.
Woody Allen is one of my favourite actors and directors. In this movie he portrays a rogue comedian, by the name of Alvy Singer, who falls in and out and generally struggles with coming to terms with what could very well be the love of his life. The film moves frantically between the different settings of periodic trends, the cafes, the movie theatres, the bars and clubs. For a city that doesn't sleep Woody Allen's New York is an insomniac, starved for rest, constantly on the verge of a nervous collapse.
Diane Keaton stars as the movies' namesake Annie Hall, a leading role she won an Oscar for, and although I'm not a believer in Oscars, she very much deserved this one. Hers is a brilliant impersonation of a woman, left barren and un-excitable, by the sexual revolution, by the expectations of a higher love that never came, a revolution that came and went.
Their story is a strange one to say the least but not as strange or as unbelievable as anyone else's, it's much like anyone else's life, with its highs and lows, dreams and aspirations, although you had to be there to truly experience it and that's what Allen gives us. The feeling that we were there in those particular years of a very human, despite an inherently chaotic, history of a city, that never sleeps, where in the pauses between the heaths of nausea weakness and distraught, people may still even if for a short while love each other.
Weather you want to believe that the phobias and insecurities of Allen's character are namely his own, how much of what you see is autobiographical or not, it's an enticing and mesmerizing story. Allen himself has claimed in his latter years that the neurotic and damn near agoraphobic character he created was just that, a character.
I love Woody Allen, but I never could get with this movie. The characters were just too unlikable. Which is the but point, but it was just too much for me. I could never care about whether or not the stayed together or ended up happy or not.
ReplyDeletePersonally I never really liked woody allen.. Not sure why.
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