Whenever I have gone back repeatedly to Woody Allen's films it has been mostly among Annie Hall, Manhattan, Vicky Christina Barcelona and Midnight in Paris. Although Hannah and her sisters is Allen's one of the most acclaimed works I never went back to it and after rewatching it after a long time I cannot seem to remember why, maybe it didn't affect me so strongly when I watched it for the first time. I have to confess I watched this in my early years of film watching and maybe I couldn't connect to the dilemmas of adult life as shown in the movie.
This film is really about all the problems and complexities adult life throws at you and how all of us in our imperfect yet humane ways deal with them. The movie is about how Hannah's sisters grow with time and how Hannah (Mia Farrow) plays an indirect role in both of their gradual growth. The movie starts and ends with a thanksgiving dinner. Between these two dinners, Hannah hasn't changed much but the change that Lee (Barbara Hershey) and Holly (Dianne Wiest) undergoes portrays Hannah in a slightly unsympathetic light. Woody Allen in most of his movies has caricatured the "intellectual". But in this movie using the nuances of sibling rivalries he shows how the unintentional follies of the intellectual or the successful one allows the other people surrounding her to break out of their shells.
The story of Elliot (Michael Caine), Hannah's husband and Lee is so fallible and yet so touching that you symapthise with both of them. Elliot is completely smitten by Lee at the first thanksgiving and Lee is also aware of it. They have a passionate affair for a year but completely ridden with guilt.
This affair allows Lee to get out of a toxic relationship she has with Frederick (Max von Sydow), an older artist who once was Lee's teacher. When Lee leaves Frederick he says, "What will I do? You are my only connection to the outer world.", Lee replies, "It's too much responsibility for me, it's not fair". This scene mocks the "intellectual" but the audience doesn't know whom to be sympathetic with. A perfect example of Allen's brilliant writing. Elliot and Lee also part ways when the guilt starts playing the bigger part. She moves on to a guilt-free relationship with another professor of hers' only to be a part of the similar and probably flawed relation. Micahel Caine's performance in this role for which he won an Oscar is absolutely flawless. His portrayal of the ineer struggles of Elliot is a delight to watch.
Woody Allen obviously reserves the most comic scenes for himself. He is Hannah's ex husband, a hypochondriac and terribly with disappointed with life. There's a line in Annie Hall where he says life can be divided into the horrible and the miserable. He follows a similar disenchanted view here too. After he survives a cancer scare he decides to leave everything as the meaninglessness of life dawns upon him more heavily.
But as in most Allen movies, after all his futile efforts in the search of faith, the simplest of things makes him understand that how that we should enjoy the meaningless journey called life. Here he discovers it through a Groucho Marx movie, surely a delightful scene after his rants about the futility of being.
The movie's most drastic arc is Holly's transformation. She transforms from an inferiority-complex ridden cocaine addict to a succesful screenwriter who marries Woody Allen by the end of the movie. This ending shows how unpredictable life is as Hannah had try to hook up Allen and Holly and they ended up deriding each other after a terribly bitter evening. With Holly's character Allen shows how is the aboslute master when it comes to writing women characters. He shows how horrid and nauseating this woman can be at her most vulnerable times and how charming and loving she can be when someone acknowledges her efforts. Diane Wiest surely had her mark on this film with her powerful Oscar winning portrayal of Holly.
The story of Hannah, is about a woman who is too independent and around whom most people don't feel needed. She is an extremely kind person but her lack of need for emotional support from her relations makes it suffocating for the people around her and they end up resenting her. Allen shows how we want to be feel needed, we can never stay in a relation just because we admire the other person. This movie is a pinnacle in Allen's understanding and writing about brilliant women characters. As with Annie in Annie Hall he shows how Holly and Lee are more charming because of their vulnerabilities, self-doubts and follies. To err is to human but to err and become charming is to women.
