I'm probably doing myself a disservice by watching
Woody Allen's movies all out of order. The movies are mostly imperfect. Their
greatest value is seeing his evolution as a filmmaker in yearly installments.
For example, I see similarities between Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes
& Misdemeanors. There are three movies he directed between those that I
haven't seen that could explain how he got from one to the other. I saw the
movie directly before Hannah and Her Sisters, The Purple Rose of
Cairo and see how the one is a direct reaction to the other; the move from
high-concept to entirely grounded, expanding on Allen's career-long obsession
with death and purpose, etc.
Hannah is
one of Allen's most praised films. I can see why. The ensemble is impressive.
They are as good narrating as they are delivering Allen's dialogue in
conversation. Allen's movie are often more about exploring a few ideas than
plot. There's a loose structure here (bookend by Thanksgivings), but it plays
more like a series of periodic check-ins of a lot of characters.
The problem I run into with much of Allen's work in
the late 70s and 80s is how much it seems to foreshadow what happened in his
real life in the 90s. His movies are lousy with much older men going after much
younger women (cough - Manhattan - cough). They are so often about men
carrying on affairs who then get treated like the victims. After the Soon-Yi
Previn stuff came out in the 90s, his movies dropped off before he started
moving into more genre and European stories in the 2000s. I don't think that's
a coincidence.
I'd agree that Hannah and Her Sisters is one
of his best screenplays. There aren't any high-concept ideas that get
half-explored. It balances the multiple stories nicely. There's a light touch
with the direction of the actors. However, by the end, I did have a moment of,
"OK, but why?" about the movie's existence.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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