Manhattan

Manhattan (1979)

Runtime: 96 minutes

Directed by: Woody Allen

Starring: Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway, Michael Murphy, Meryl Streep

From: United Artists

I return from a needed day off of watching film to… uncork a review to discuss a famous movie from a controversial director? Yes, Manhattan leaving Prime at the end of the month made me pull a trigger on a movie I’ve had trepidation about for ages but now was finally the occasion. In the past I’ve talked about separating the art from the artist, and that disclaimer seems necessary during the rare times that I review a Woody Allen movie, mainly due to the seriousness of the allegations against him in recent years. As a human being, he’s rather abominable. A shame that he’s one heck of a director.

Manhattan (the movie and the island) looked stunning throughout due to the black and white cinematography of Gordon Willis. The opening was tremendous-Woody delivered a variety of different phrases that described NYC in a variety of different ways as images of the city were shown, all to a Gershwin soundtrack. The characters are various degrees of pretension but my attention did not waver as Woody played a (get this) neurotic comedy writer who has Meryl Streep as an ex-wife, dates another woman but starts romancing Diane Keaton, who is having an affair w/ a married man. How tolerable you find these people is up to you. Viewing how these characters interact w/ each other is the draw here.

A plot point I’ll call “questionable”: the woman that Allen dates is Mariel Hemingway… who played a 17-year-old and was less than 18 during filming. Yes, a 42-year-old man doing so; was it really OK at the time to do this? In this picture at least, it was. If I ever decided to do such a thing as the 43-year-old man currently, there better be outrage from everyone that a middle-aged man would take advantage of someone like this! Allen’s friends aren’t disgusted by this, believe it or not. If that wasn’t uncomfortable enough, Woody IRL actually dated women this age at the time; yes, “women.” There’s dispute as to which woman was the actual inspiration, if it wasn’t a combo of various women. They were take advantage of, which is something that was impossible to excise from my mind while experiencing Manhattan.

It was still a motion picture worthy of viewing; whether a second viewing will ever occur is more uncertain. Manhattan looks and sounds nice w/ its Gershwin soundtrack yet I’ll never forget that Allen presented his id for the entire world. Perhaps this is why afterwards, he was ashamed of the film and probably still now believes it to be his “worst.” For many that belief is just befuddling but it wouldn’t be the first time a director was wrong about their own work. Regardless, if Woody Allen is not someone you automatically avoid for film taste reasons or because of his behavior out of the director’s chair AND you can stomach Allen presenting his id when he probably shouldn’t have… there is plenty to admire about Manhattan.