I can’t believe I’m attempting to write Annie Hall after downing 4 martinis and 2 vodka shots on a Sunday night. But this is the type of movie that I would love to write about whether drunk or sober especially after watching it for the n+1th time last night.
Annie Hall is not about Annie nor is it about Alvy Singer, it is about relationships.
Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) says ‘I thought of that old joke, y'know, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and... but, uh, I guess we keep going' through it because, uh, most of us... need the eggs.”
So Annie Hall is yes, about the relationship between Alvyn and Annie but maybe it is also about relationships between people who think too much, who look for ‘mental masturbation’.
Alvy (Woody Allen) meets Annie (Diane Keaton) at a tennis match, a friendly match between two New Yorkers. Annie is sweet, dresses sexy and is a girl who calls her grandma as ‘Grammie’ and says ‘la de da’!
Alvy Singer reads books featuring Death and watches ‘Sorrow and the Pity’, a documentary on the holocaust and the Nazis.
You do not know if Alvy is right or Annie is as both of them have their moments of irrational behavior. Alvy insists on Annie attending adult education classes and Annie cannot make love until she gets high on grass.
If you are a person who is not into dialogue and that too of the pseudo-intellectualism variant then this is one flick you would want to run away from.
Where else can you hear words like ‘making love to you is a Kafkaesque experience and I mean that as a compliment’!
Watching Mr. and Mrs. Smith is so much easier than watching Annie Hall by millions of people worldwide because one cannot understand intellectual stimulation as easily as you understand chemistry between two beautiful people.
Annie is an aspiring singer and although Alvyn is a successful television comedian, he is jealous of Annie and her success when a California agent wants to sign her up for a recording.
He does not get a chance go by without making fun of California
[In California]
Annie Hall: It's so clean out here.
Alvy Singer: That's because they don't throw their garbage away, they turn it into television shows.
It is funny only to people who can get the jokes,
[Alvy Singer does a stand-up comic act for a college audience]
Alvy Singer: I was thrown out of N.Y.U. my freshman year for cheating on my metaphysics final, you know. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me. When I was thrown out, my mother, who was an emotionally high-strung woman, locked herself in the bathroom and took an overdose of Mah-Jongg tiles. I was depressed at that time. I was in analysis. I was suicidal as a matter of fact and would have killed myself, but I was in analysis with a strict Freudian, and, if you kill yourself, they make you pay for the sessions you miss.
But then i really can't do justice to the dialogues of Annie Hall in a blog post of 1000 or 2000 words, you have to watch it because almost all the dialogues are quotable.Not to mention, the unique way of direction!
Also don’t tell me I didn’t warn you. It is not a movie with a happy ending, it is not a movie where there is action and a handsome hero, it is not a movie of the Ben Stiller type of romantic comedy and lastly, it is no Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
But yes if you know what ‘mental masturbation’ is, do watch it and thank me for the reco’.
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