HANNAH AND HER SISTERS. (1986) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY WOODY ALLEN. STARRING WOODY ALLEN, MIA FARROW, MICHAEL CAINE, DIANNE WIEST, BARBARA HERSHEY, MAX VON SYDOW, CARRIE FISHER, JULIE KAVNER, SOON-YI PREVIN AND SAM WATERSTON.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
'How should I know why there were
Nazis? I don't even know how the can opener works.'
I think you'll either hate Woody Allen
and his nervous, shuffling, neurotic little on-screen persona or
you'll love him. I'm in the latter camp, and I don't mind saying so.
He's over eighty now, this film-maker whom movie critic Roger Ebert
once described as 'a treasure of the cinema,' and
still making movies. CAFÉ
SOCIETY was his latest and it
was pretty good. Not bad for an octogenosaurus, as Homer Simpson
might say!
Speaking
of THE SIMPSONS, Ned
Flan-diddly-anders was once heard to remark that he 'likes
those Woodsy Allen movies, except for that little nervous fella who's always
in 'em...!' That's Woodsy Allen
all right, haha. He's at his nervous, most neurotic best in HANNAH
AND HER SISTERS.
He
plays Mickey, the titular Hannah's ex-husband. He's a middle-aged
hypochondriacal television writer who constantly thinks he's dying.
We all know someone, don't we, who thinks they've contracted every
illness under the sun from Dutch Elm disease to the mange? It's worse
if they have THE BIG BOOK OF SYMPTOMS or
access to the Internet, because then there's no stopping them in
their quest for the ultimate infection.
Anyway,
Mickey not only thinks he's got Bubonic plague (or
something like it, anyhow) but
he's also undergoing a pretty severe existential crisis, in that he's
looking for something else to believe in, a new religion maybe, much to the
dismay of his Jewish parents.
There's
much hilarity as Mickey toys with the idea of becoming a Catholic and
even a Hare Krishna, but he doesn't see himself spending his days
hanging around the airports sporting robes and a shaved head, as
indeed I suppose most of us don't. Airports are such messy, noisy sweaty places. I doubt if anyone spends
more time there than they'd have to, haha. Except for the people who work there, of course.
The
Hannah of the title is played by Mia Farrow, Woody Allen's
then-partner. (Don't mention the war, whatever you do!) My favourite ever film of hers wasn't a Woody Allen
film at all actually, but Roman Polanski's marvellous horror movie, ROSEMARY'S
BABY, in which she unknowingly
gives birth to the son of Satan. Well, you can scoff, but you'd be
surprised how easily that can happen. I nearly did it myself once, but that's a story for another time.
Anyway,
Hannah seems to really have her shit together, to the occasional envy
of her two scattier sisters, Lee and Holly. Married to Michael
Caine's Elliot, she's got lovely kids and hosts the family's
Thanksgiving dinners and she's so seemingly self-confident and
competent in all areas of her life that her family, and her husband
Elliot in particular, tends to think that she hasn't any needs at all
of her own.
That's
no excuse for what Elliot does to her, though. I've loved Michael
Caine in everything I've ever seen him in except this film. He's a
typical sleazebag of a married man in it, trying to have his cake and
eat it too. How Barbara Hershey's Lee can bring herself to go along
with Elliott is a mystery to me. (Maybe the lady's mind
was traumatised by being raped so many times by THE ENTITY a few
years previously, heh-heh-heh. That's a film joke, by the way, definitely not libel!)
Doesn't
Lee know that Elliot's only full of shit, like every married man
ever? I apologise to the married men out there who really did
leave their wives, but to the
rest of 'em, well, youse ain't getting' nuthin,' as
anti-social bartender Moe from THE SIMPSONS might
put it.
And how
dare the pair of them make a cuckold out of Father Lankester Merrin,
who got puked on by Regan in THE EXORCIST and
never turned a hair, God bless his soul? To make such a wonderful man wear the cuckold's
horns is an act of the grossest disrespect. Okay, so maybe I'm being
tongue-in-cheek but still, Elliot's a louse and Lee
doesn't know what the
heck she wants. There, I said it.
Holly (Dianne Wiest, the Avon Lady from Tim
Burton's EDWARD SCISSORHANDS) and April's sharing of yet another married man (David,
played by Sam Waterston. What was that thing he was in, was it NYPD
BLUES or HILL STREET BLUES? The blues were definitely in there
somewhere!) is yet another example
of how the world is full of married men and most of 'em end up
hitting on me at some
point. Disregard that
last bit. We're meant to be talking about the film, not me. By the
way, what else would you guys like to know about me...?
The
late great Carrie Fisher plays April, by the way, and someone whose
voice you may
recognise over their face is the wonderful Julie Kavner. In this
film, she plays Gail, Mickey's co-worker on the TV show, but you guys
might know her better for voicing Marge Simpson and her chain-smoking twin sisters
Patty and Selma Bouvier in hit animated programme THE
SIMPSONS.
HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, which
is chock-full of witty comebacks and one-liners, is out on Blu-Ray
from February 20th
2017, courtesy of ARROW ACADEMY and
FETCH PUBLICITY. That's the good
news. The
even better news is that so is RADIO DAYS (1987),
another classic Woody Allen film.
So indulge in 'em both and have the
threesome of a lifetime. Then, in the style of one of Woody's
characters, go see your analyst. It's only fair. After all, (s)he's got
boat payments to make...
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA
HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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