Tag: family drama

Film by Alex Sheremet
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A shot of the women in Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986), which includes the director, Dianne Wiest, Mia Farrow, and Barbara Hershey, receiving instructions from Woody Allen, and reviewed and analyzed by the world's leading Woody Allen critic, Alex Sheremet, for the automachination literary magazine.

GREATNESS 101: Analyzing Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986)

Although the popularity of “Hannah and Her Sisters” made Woody Allen doubt the quality of his own film, it remains one of those rare accomplishments that is both truly great, and well-loved — two things that are in fact quite different, for the latter is based on attachments and on whims, which cannot be argued, while the former involves reason, evidence, and objectivity in its claims, which can therefore be evaluated. I do not like (much less ‘love’) the film, for reasons immaterial to it and therefore uninteresting to anyone who wants to know something of the art-work, itself. Yet I still wish for it to be seen; know that it needs to be seen, until its meditations and its wisdom are the viewer’s, and so that future film-makers can use it as a stepping-stone for great characters, complex interactions, subtle ironies, poetic inversions, and ‘twists’ that seem to be mere plot devices, yet say, in fact, much about the characters themselves, and what they have or have not learned. I’d go recommend it, but its enduring popularity already takes care of that. Instead, I’d like to discuss why the film works, for reasons beyond mere love or mass appeal, so that similar things could be observed and championed in Woody’s other films, including those still being wrongly overlooked.

In some ways, “Hannah and Her Sisters” revisits the same tropes of Interiors, with a seemingly talented artist, Hannah (Mia Farrow), a ‘sore loser’ and drug user, Holly (Dianne Wiest), and a half-lost woman, Lee (Barbara Hershey), who, perhaps out of envy or resentment, starts an affair with Hannah’s husband, Elliot (Michael Caine). In fact, the film begins with Elliot mesmerized by Lee during a Thanksgiving party, an interesting twist that immediately puts the viewer into the mind of a romantic, subverted by the fact that he’s essentially a creep. As the dinner progresses, Holly asks for money, Lee wonders about Elliot’s feelings, and the three sisters gab while their aging parents sing Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered on the piano — one of the film’s key songs, which turns into a trope whose import only comes later. As Hannah is complimented all around, one gets the feeling that she is both meek and self-congratulatory, for such moments are well-acted enough that one doesn’t know whether she’s puffing herself up at the expense of her sisters, or merely being matter-of-fact. Lee goes back to her apartment with her boyfriend, Frederick (Max von Sydow), an overbearing, misanthropic older artist, while Hannah’s former husband, Mickey (Woody Allen), a television producer, makes his first appearance as a stressed hypochondriac. He’s subjected to endless medical tests due to his constant worrying, at one point even fantasizing about his own impending death due to a non-existent tumor. This, then, is the film’s make-up, for the main characters’ issues are all played against Mickey’s, whose silliness highlights the silliness of their own self-inflicted problems, even as they evade or obfuscate, and downright magnify them as being ‘deeper’ than they really are. Yes, it is a borrowing from earlier films like Annie Hall, but goes beyond it as it approaches similar subjects — death, love, and other human relationships — more deeply, probing, as it does, far more than ‘mere’ romance. […]

Film by Alex Sheremet
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INTERIORS (1978): Woody Allen’s Most Underrated Film?

Woody Allen’s Interiors aimed higher and accomplished more than anything else the director had previously done. The film takes a kernel — a family in turmoil — and shows how characters are affected by it, as well as how they, themselves, are the contributors to the dissolution. Interiors shocked viewers upon release, for it had exactly zero comedic value, and remains one of the heaviest stories that Woody Allen has written to this day. It is also precisely what is so hated in Allen’s work, for he skewers an ‘upper crust’ family in a way that is both poetic and realistic, thus opening Allen up to criticism because ‘they’ don’t like what they see, or simply do not believe it. And yet, for all the superficial difficulty one might have with ‘getting into it’, it is, at its core, a highly complex and well-wrought drama, full of great characters, interesting symbols (the red dress at end; the black, almost cosmic tape during the first suicide attempt), and some really great psychological interplay between three sisters that would not be equaled until Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).

Yes, it’s often been derided as Woody aping Bergman, but while Bergman is clearly an influence, Allen is in no way derivative of him. Interiors partly revolves around art and its misuses; its lack of a ‘savior’ element for the characters (Eve, especially); and many of the personages, such as Joey (Mary Beth Hurt), are completely and inarguably American, in the sense that they suffer through American excess and American leisure; all of which (art’s neuroses included) have become a Woody trademark, not a Bergmanian one. Joey, in particular, is a true and fully realized ‘type,’ a ponderous, artistic wannabe that, for all of her detractors in print and online, is completely real, and can appear pretty much anywhere in life, as if from the very thinness of the space she inhabits: art cafes, jazz shows, gallery openings, and whatever else might invite such congregation. In short, the film defines its own moments, not Bergman’s, a truth which has rarely been examined at length. […]

Film by Waqas Jani
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A shot from Satyajit Ray's nuanced family drama "Mahanagar", depicting a husband and wife (not the main character) discussing why they can't take a loan from another couple.

Routine Overwhelms: Reviewing Satyajit Ray’s “Mahanagar” (1963)

Too often a work of art is reduced to a single theme or narrative. While I cannot fully explain why this happens, the most obvious reason is that the obvious reaps attention. Such is the case with Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar (The Big City), a film that, despite receiving rave reviews since its release, seems to have received deeper critical attention.

Set in 1950s Kolkata (then Calcutta), an extremely volatile decade following the partition of India, Mahanagar is a drama about a struggling middleclass family. No longer can the man of the house be the only earner and support a family that also includes his parents and sister.  The woman also has to step out, even at the cost of upsetting the tradition. While a premise like this might seem straight out of a Bollywood snoozer, Mahanagar is the work of an accomplished artist, where things are never quite predictable, nor do the characters go through sweeping transformations due to a single event or revelation. Instead, revelations are implicit in how the characters respond to their circumstances.

Take, for instance, the scene where Subrata (Anil Chatterjee), after allowing his wife Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee) to work—much to the disapproval of his parents—has her sign a resignation letter just because his ego is hurt seeing her thrive in her work. The scene is swift and there is no protest on part of Arati; for her, it’s just a part of her accepted reality. Moreover, she had taken the job because she wanted to support her husband, even as she grew to love it in the process. This is an important distinction, for a conventional feminist portrayal would have showcased this job as a symbol of freedom existing outside of Arati, as a totalizing reality, rather than a newfound reality that was co-created by her—one that had, in fact, become a part of her. […]