5 Reasons to Watch, and Love, Manhattan
by Zorianna Zurba
We’ve followed him from New York to London, London to Barcelona, back to London, and now to Paris. Let’s get back to New York, and luxuriate with our favourite New Yorker. Manhattan, well, Brooklyn to be exact, is Woody Allen’s home, and Manhattan might feel like a homecoming, but it's really where he has (where we have?) always been.
“Chapter One. He adored New York City”
Isaac is our voice and our eyes. We see New York City through him, and as he wants to see it. And what an eye full: the sun rising over Central Park, construction men balancing on floating beams, street smart men in suits who know all the angles, beautiful women, crowds and traffic, the Yankees hitting a homer in (old) Yankee Stadium as fireworks light up the sky and the D train chugs by, all the while Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is building slowly to expose New York’s vibrancy with cymbal’s crashing and drums beating—and our hearts pumping. Isaac’s New York is a visual frenzy.
“Chapter One. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved."
Manhattan might be shot in black and white, but it feels vibrant and resonates: the chocolate sheen of the horses as Issac and Tracey are being taken in a horse drawn carriage around Central Park; the slate cratered surface of the planets as Mary and Issac are walking through the planetarium; the shimmering cornsilk of Jill’s waist length hair; the auburn freckles that grace Tracey’s cheeks (just one of the things that makes life worth living for Isaac); and the piercing yellows, oranges and hints of peach as the sunsets over Central Park to the tune of the Gershwin finale.
“Did you meet for Sanka? That's not too romantic. A little on the geriatric side.”
The characters in Manhattan create a constant flurry. They fight over the meaning of art; what art is too derivative, and who belongs in the Academy of the Overrated (Mahler, Mozart, Bergman…the silence, the silence, we get it). They fight over (the lack of) meaning in the universe: what is more important luck or courage? They fight over the ethics of love: who was in love with whom first, and under what pretense? They call their analysts, sometimes they even call them Donnie.
“You had the wrong kind? Mine are always right on the money.”
Love and isn’t easily won, or kept in Manhattan. Isaac’s son is being raised by his ex-wife Jill and her lover; he struggles over letting younger paramour Tracey spend the night, and is tortured by his growing affection for Mary, his best-friend’s lover. Emily craves a child and longs to move to Connecticut, while Yale is sneaking about Mary, despite his wavering affections. Mary is torn between her affection for Yale and Issac. During her undergrad days at Radcliffe, Mary fell in love with her Professor after he failed her. She claims that he’s a genius and really opened her up sexually; but Jeremiah—at least through Isaac’s eyes—turns out to be a homunculous.
“You’ve got to have faith in people. ”
With all the ambiguity of affections being criss-crossed between characters, it seems that relationships are a tricky quagmire. But it is Tracey, with a toothy grin and good intentions that reminds us that sometimes we all get corrupted, and in the end we need to have faith. A simple statement that leaves Isaac slack jawed and dumbstruck, and leaves us with splendour of emotional fireworks. Manhattan has, and always will be, an island for falling in love. And Manhattan is a film about finding, losing, and falling in love again, and again.