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5.0étoiles sur 5
Because we need the eggs, Juil 2 2004
Ok, let me get this one thing out of the way: when I was 12, Annie Hall beat Star Wars for the Best Picture Academy Award, and I was not a happy kid. However, time can do funny things...I first saw this picture a few years later, with my first real girlfriend (hi, Lisa!) on the revival circuit. I found it witty and intelligent, as I have with most of Woody Allen's films. I have to say that, to my 16-year-old mind, it still didn't make a huge impression. Twenty years and a failed marriage later, however, I think I can honestly say that I now get it. Annie Hall is, to me, Woody Allen's greatest triumph as a filmmaker and a storyteller. It's a bittersweet, often hilarious recounting of a relationship from its start to its inevitable end. We see Allen at his most honest, at times brutal examination of himself and his destructive approach to relationships as he plays Alvy Singer, a funny, neurotic comedian (not a great stretch for Woody, granted). All the angst, the neuroses, and manic phobias that at first seem so idiosyncratic and charming, eventually become tiring and sad. Here is a man who is so attached to his psychoses that he would be an empty shell without them, and we see the painful fact of this in his reflections of previous relationships and marriages throughout the course of his adult life. Ultimately, this is a character so galvanized by his fears and phobias that he is simply incapable of managing a complex adult relationship, one free of paranoia and anxiety and this is his tragic downfall. In short, he is a small child trapped in the body of a small man. This is not, however, one of Allen's Bergmanesque forays into introspection. The knee-slapping hilarity of many of the scenes help draw us into his world and the relationship he has with Annie (Diane Keaton, marvelous as always), his friends, his family, and the world around him. A particular favorite is when, on their first meeting, Alvy and Annie exchange basic getting-to-know-you small talk, and their hidden meanings and anxieties are shown to us in subtitles. Other scenes involving a movie-line blowhard, a lost mantra, and Annie's decidedly white-bread family are the stuff of legend, and they never fail to bring a smile to my face. Though this film is nearing thirty-years old, it shows no sign of aging. The themes are familiar and universal; who hasn't fallen desperately in love, only to feel the painful tentacles of fear come creeping in the moment they've opened their heart for all the world to see? This film will never lose its place in my heart as one of the best films I've ever seen.
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