MANHATTAN

Hot off the success of Annie Hall and the modest achievement of Interiors, Woody Allen delivered Manhattan. Like its predecessor Annie Hall, the film explores the maddeningly complex nature of inter-human relationships and features both Allen and Dianne Keaton in lead roles. However, it also introduces another character to the proceedings – the city of Manhattan. In the opening monologue of Manhattan, Allen through the mouthpiece of his character Isaac Davies declares himself ‘a romantic’. It is clear from this film that the true love of his life is the city of Manhattan. So this is Allen’s (perhaps over-romanticised) view of the city – a snapshot of how the upper-class live and love in the cultural centre of America and arguably, the world.

Yes – this film may be a little picture perfect. Maybe it’s no more representative of New York than a collection of postcards. We see the Guggenheim, Central Park and other iconic Manhattan locations. There’s a sheen granted to the scenery through cinematographer Gordon Willis’ stark, powerful black and white imagery that chisels away the grime and the smut from the city and presents it in all its glory. The visuals sparkle and make a terrific combination with George Gershwin’s glorious soundtrack. Yes it’s a sentimental, idealized portrait of the city, but it’s also unashamedly bewitching and beautiful. Besides, even if the locales are embellished and romanticised the characters and locals that populate the city are fully realised, interesting individuals. The film holds no punches in showing these people to be selfish, impulsive and at times loathsome.

When the film begins, Isaac Davies a 42 year-old twice divorced writer is dating Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) a 17 year-old school girl. Isaac views Tracy as a fun, unchallenging partner to be discarded when his next true love arrives. Upon meeting his friend Yale’s Mistress, Mary Wilkie (Dianne Keaton) he believes he has found the woman he wants to be with. The trouble is, Mary is in love with Yale, who is still in love with his wife. The story itself is a pretty simple love-triangle, but the relationships the characters have with one another and how they feel towards each other are somewhat more multi-layered.

It can be difficult to get past the fact that the key relationship in this film is one between an aging man and a naive young girl. It’s made clear that Isaac has performed acts of statutory rape which adds to the sense of moral decrepitude that his character garners throughout the course of the film. Allen tries to play it off with a series of jokes, some of them funny: “I'm older than her father, can you believe that? I'm dating a girl, wherein, I can beat up her father”, but many of them - intentionally or not – uncomfortable, particularly when he is boasting about his sexual prowess. It’s some relief then that Allen allows us to see Isaac’s conflicted feelings towards Tracy. At points in the first half of the film, we see from the way he treats this young girl that he knows that this relationship is one that will only be beneficial for him and that he is not free from guilt. At least it is clear that he knows that this is not a socially acceptable relationship – see his face when Tracy upon being asked what she does for a living, replies: “I go to High School.”

So we are presented with a conflicted morally questionable individual who falls in love, or so he thinks with Manhattan socialite and general snob Mary Wilkie. Mary is the very definition of pretentious and holds no qualms in sharing her dismissive views on the likes of Gustav Mahler, Carl Jung, Scott Fitzgerald, Norman Mailer, Ingmar Bergman, Van Gogh and Kierkegaard. It’s difficult to see what Isaac finds to like in Mary, but then Isaac is not entirely free from pretentions himself. The two are brought together mainly through dissatisfaction from their current relationships and believe mistakenly that through each other they will find happiness. Mary, dissatisfied with her fling with Yale seeks something more permanent and stable, whilst Isaac seeks somebody who is his intellectual equal, somebody who he would not feel ashamed to be with in public.

The main problem with Manhattan is its lack of likeable characters. Aside from Tracy (Hemingway was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, for what remains a quiet yet sympathetic portrait of a naive girl madly in love) we are given nobody to root for. Thankfully the film does not lack Woody Allen’s trademark wit and is full of quotable lines. The performances are all good: we see how conflicted these characters are and the effect their relationships have on each other is clear and well defined. It’s also Allen’s best looking film thanks to the fantastic cinematography of Gordon Willis, which really is reason enough alone to see this film.

Manhattan is at its best in the final five minutes when Isaac realises his mistakes and chases down the true love of his life (who is now 18). The scene where he records into a tape-deck a list of things that really matters to him is both masterful and touching. We also finally see Isaac reach a level of emotional maturity in the final scene. It is here we realise: Manhattan is not a film about love – at least not romantic love; the lead characters are all too impulsive and selfish to describe any of their relationships as pertaining of romantic love. Instead we see Isaac learn to let go of his selfish desires and to ‘have faith’ that things will work out okay. If Annie Hall was a movie about how relationships fall apart or break-up, Manhattan is about the difficulty of letting go.