Allen's Strange Love, or How I Learned to Stop Whining and Love the Film ...

Rating: 10/10 (5 November 2011)

You know this awkward and uncomfortable feeling when you just finished a joke and yet everyone looks like waiting for the punch line, inviting for a humiliating "That's it" that tolls the bell of a benign but painful failure? Well, my worst memory comes from a joke that I swore I would never speak about again, but let's exorcise the inner demons behind the mask of anonymity. There's a guy who comes to his friend and tells him "I have two news for you" His friend says "Well, start with the bad news" to which the other replies: "They're both bad news"
This summarizes the first feeling I had with Woody Allen's most acclaimed and praised film, "Annie Hall", the movie still famous, or infamous, depends on the POV, for having beaten the much more spectacular, groundbreaking and popular "Star Wars" in the Best Picture Oscar competition.
I was not the Woody Allen fan I happen to be now; I was totally unfamiliar with his 80's and 90's work and probably more compliment-oriented towards his slapstick period. I expected from "Annie Hall" a romantic comedy between the eternally neurotic Woody character and a sort of hip and free-spirited woman played by Diane Keaton and named Annie Hall. Well, I wasn't disappointed on that level, but while I wanted to see a movie really worthy of a Best Picture Oscar, something that would provide a nice mix of wit and emotions, I could only see a pretentious ego-centered movie with no point, no structure, no appeal, the movie left me with a very flat feeling, and God knows how I've always hated flatness. So indeed, 'they were both bad news.'
But I guess I was victim of the 'Illusory Time' concept. You know what the illusory time concept is? It's this revolutionary idea that time doesn't exist, not quite the way we interpret it as a reality conditioned by the existence of a past, a present, a future but more the combination of the three into one perpetual present. This theory relies on the universe's inner property: its expansion. And while you can define a point on Earth by three spatial and one temporal coordinates, if you take a more universal approach, you realize that the three spatial dimensions will never be static considering the expansion of the universe. In other words, we're never in the same point. This doesn't really make me feel as anxious as young Alvy Singer, but this explains why I disliked Allen's "Annie Hall".
When you take "Annie Hall" as a whole, no pun intended, it's just a movie about a guy who thinks himself as the center of this expanding universe and analyzes the world from his own perspective, he pompously and pretentiously expresses a cynicism disguised in wit to better hide his own self-loathing nature. At the end, it's all about talking and talking, it's a succession of good lines, of creative plot devices, something was lacking, but I couldn't point my finger what and where. I didn't really dislike "Annie Hall" but I disliked the fact that it was Allen's most popular film, the winner of the Best Picture Oscar, and I hated the fact that I couldn't get why this movie was great, what makes it such a gem. I almost wished I could have the real Allen with me to tell me what was so great about it.
Three years have gone, I've seen almost all Allen's films, he became one of my favorite directors, I gained some cinematic maturity, and before I could watch "Annie Hall" again, I could at least put it in a chronological map in both Allen's filmography and History of Cinema. "Annie Hall" is the cinematic transition between Allen's slapstick period and his glorious streak of unique and creative films with autobiographical undertones that would reach its pinnacle in the 80's. It plays exactly like "City Lights" for Charlie Chaplin, the time we discover a character we're familiar with, involved in a more mature material, but never losing his appeal. It's not drama Woody, or romantic Woody, it's the same neurotic Woody with something new, that would defines his future work. Dr. Woody and Mr. Allen.
"Annie Hall"'s year of release is also significant because it coincides with the new era of blockbusters that would put an end to the extraordinary New Hollywood wave, in a way, the story of Alvy Singer and Annie Hall, the beautiful singer, is the swan song of a form of artistic expression that can only pass for pretension because, now, we, modern or younger movie viewers are more familiar with characters who never display hints of intellectual superiority toward their audience, not in romantic comedies anyway. Would we ever have characters talking about stuff we don't know about, even if it's made to sound sophisticated and pretentious, like Freud, McLuhan or Swedish Cinema. Never, even Harry and Sally were discussing about "Casablanca" a much more approachable movie. I guess we blame Allen for being so indulgent because he can't make us feel indulgent toward his characters. But this is the gutsy aspect of "Annie Hall" and the contributor of its unique appeal.
So, as a movie to enjoy on the present, "Annie Hall" is tricky, but if you have enough patience to let the film grow on you, it reaches the level of a valuable gem, and its victory over "Star Wars" is only the last agonizing breath before Cinema d'Auteur could take a big dive. And I hope you won't knock the previous intellectual masturbation about the universe, thank you.
There was a joke I've always liked, about a little boy asking his father "Dad, are we in America yet?" to which his dad says "Just shut up and keep on swimming" Well, I guess this sums up my new feeling of "Annie Hall", its greatness is probably like this America, and I guess right now, I'm starting to see the coast.