"Manhattan" (1979)

Some movies draw symbolic parallels to today’s troubling situation. Others, with their imagery and ideas about universal human themes, can provoke nostalgic appreciation for the places that are so prominent in today’s news, and for ways of life that we took for granted in the years BC (Before Coronavirus). 

Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” is a valentine to New York City, especially to that fabled, affluent borough of writers, artists, professors, and intellectuals whose life-dramas take place above the fray, in the exclusive hangouts of fashionable people who function at the highest levels, and whose pursuits of self-actualization often lead to complications of their own creation.  Nobody knew that these life-dramas would be put on hold some forty years later.

Allen’s paean to New York City is an occasion to meditate on the vibrancy of New York as he knew it; to lament how its dense population has today become a powder-keg of contagion; and to wonder whether the city can ever regain its vitality and its comfort level with the crowds that energized it.  Most important, near the film’s conclusion, “Manhattan” announces its theme explicitly, in a way that made me ponder the things that are important, and why I’m here.

Allen, starring in and directing his own screenplay like he did two years before with “Annie Hall”, plays Isaac, a divorced 42-year-old author in a romantic relationship with Tracy, a 17-year-old high school student.    Isaac’s ex-wife (Meryl Streep), now involved with another woman (Anne Byrne), is about to publish an embarrassing memoir about her marriage to Isaac.  Isaac’s best friend Yale (Michael Murphy) is having an affair with Mary (Diane Keaton), a pretentious writer divorced from the “devastatingly sexual” Jeremiah (the elflike Wallace Shawn).  When Yale and Mary call it off, Isaac and Mary get involved, while Isaac tries to find a way out of his fling with Tracy, who has fallen in love with him.

Neuroses clash and hearts are broken, while most of the characters are too self-involved to consider whether these busy relationships are empty or meaningful.

“Manhattan” is a more dramatic companion-piece to “Annie Hall”, and slightly less satisfying.  Allen tries to re-work much of “Annie Hall”s comic bits, which sometimes fall flat here.  “Manhattan” is a colder, cerebral, at times static comedy, without the variety of humor that made “Annie Hall” as fun as it was thoughtful. 

Artistically, “Manhattan” has two things going for it.  One is the gorgeous black-and-white cinematography of Gordon Willis. The lighting, the contrasts, the portraits of the characters’ faces, the startlingly beautiful images of well-known landmarks, make “Manhattan” one of the best-looking movies made in the 70s.

The other big plus is the jazzy, sophisticated music of George Gershwin, especially “Rhapsody in Blue”, which Allen used to score the entire picture.  Gershwin supplies what heart the film has; and when the pace flags, the music gets the pulse going again.  If you imagine “Manhattan” without Gershwin, it’s clear that Allen let Gershwin do a lot of his work for him.

What ultimately redeems “Manhattan” for me, and what made me return to it especially now, is a scene near the end,  just as we are asking ourselves why these annoying people can't get their relationships in order, and why we should care.  Isaac dictates his idea for a short story into a tape recorder: about how “people in Manhattan constantly create…unnecessary neurotic problems for themselves, that keep them from dealing with the more unsolvable, terrifying problems about the universe.”  How indeed would characters like Isaac and Mary and Yale maintain their sense of identity, if not their sanity, during a quarantine?  The lack of outside activity and distraction gives one time to reflect, and that can be terrifying.

With nothing but free time during the stay-at-home order, and few places to go, I fill my day with activity: walking, running, yoga, reading, cooking, eating, watching movies. I occasionally ask myself if this is not all just empty activity, as I wait for the return of the things I used to enjoy; and whether even those things are meaningful?

Isaac then goes on to make a list of things that “make life worth living”.  His list is filled with famous artists (Groucho Marx, Cezanne, Brando, Sinatra, Louis Armstrong), titles of books and music (Flaubert’s “Sentimental Education”, “The Jupiter Symphony”) and the like.  But out of his complex network of social contacts, he names only one person who gives his life meaning: Tracy, the one whose heart he has broken.

I am fortunate to go through the coronavirus ordeal with a husband that I love.  I can reach out to friends electronically, even personally at a distance.  Many things that I truly enjoy, like movies and writing, are accessible to me at home.  Forced down-time makes me more apt to question why I was born, what my being alive means, and what good my life is going forward.   It is worth taking regular inventory of those things that make life worth living.  Always I return to the fact that, aside from movies, writing, and other activities that define my personal identity, it is the people around me, especially those I love, that give it meaning.

A final note about the elephant in the room:  Audiences at the time of “Manhattan” were ready to accept younger actresses in roles with notoriously mature subject matter. For instance, in 1976, 14-year-old Jodie Foster had portrayed a prostitute who danced with her sleazy pimp in “Taxi Driver”. 12-year-old Linda Blair, in “The Exorcist”, had said and done things that would have been unspeakable even if performed by an adult.  

Even though the age of consent in New York is 17, and Hemingway (and her character) are nearly 18 in the film, “Manhattan” is difficult today due to the the casual acceptance of a sexual relationship between Isaac and Tracy.  A few scenes between Allen and Hemingway made me uncomfortable because of the nonchalance with which he jokes about their age difference (and her barely minor status).  The sense of exploitation is greater today, and it hits too close to home after years of media and tabloid reports about Allen since “Manhattan” was released.  I’m not here to pass judgement against Allen personally, but the baggage of the reports is hard to ignore.

Also, mature as her character is, it seems unlikely that Tracy and Isaac’s worlds would have intersected at all; how did they ever get involved?  Tracy appears more like an idea of innocence in Allen’s scheme, an ideal of uncorrupted love, rather than a fully realized human being.  It is to Hemingway’s credit that she gives the role such humanity, and the film’s only real display of emotional pain.  It is a role that seems to be unacted, so natural are her reactions and genuine precocious sweetness.  Her performance earned Hemingway an Oscar nomination.