Hannah and Her Sisters

Out of the three sisters, I enjoyed Holly the most. Which evidently, Dianne Wiest won best supporting actress that year for playing Holly. Holly was quirky and she was always open to new ideas. I thought the scene where Mickey and her are listening to a rock band was hilarious. And then the switch from the rock band to the blues singer was priceless. Holly dabbles in different career choices: as an actress, caterer, and a writer. Everyone seemed to rely on Hannah though. Holly constantly went to Hannah for money. Whenever Hannah offered advice to Holly, Holly reacted strongly and would get upset at Hannah. But Hannah would apologize and would not be upset. Hannah was independent and strong, but I thought she needed to be tougher at times. She was passive in some ways. Lee is an interesting character. Even though she loved her sister, she continually slept with Hannah's husband. She would not take responsibility for what she did. When the three of them are eating at the restaurant, Lee yells at Holly for arguing with Hannah. She is taking her own guilt and using that to argue with Holly instead of arguing with herself for what she was doing to her own sister. Elliot also "loves" Hannah even though he is sleeping with Lee. It seems like in many movies, a character says they love their spouse, but they cheat on them anyway. I am not sure what Allen and other directors are trying to say. Maybe love isn't enough...? Frederick was a dispicable character. I thought he was pathetic because Lee was his only connection to the real world. The scene where Lee breaks up with Frederick was sad though, because the audience saw how much he relied on her. That was an extremely realistic break-up scene. Woody Allen depicts break-up scenes well I think. He does that in Manhattan also.
The body language in the first and last section were very evident to me. Elliot is leaning against the wall in the first scene, lusting over Lee. He also does this in the last scene, staring at Lee and her new husband. There are also many Nazi references again in this film. Frederick tells Lee that "there was a dull TV show about Auschwitz" on. He also says that the question is not how could something like the Holocaust happen, but "Why doesn't it happen more often?". He says it does happen, just not as drastic as the Holocaust was. At the end of Holly and Mickey's date, Mickey says, "I had a great time tonight. It was like the Nuremberg Trials". When Hannah is asking Elliot if he is seeing another woman, he says, "What is this? The Gestapo?" During that scene, Elliot also mentions Connecticut, a flashback to the Cavell films. When Mickey is talking to his parents he asks them, "Why were there Nazis?" As all of these Nazis references come up in Allen's films, I wonder if he had any relatives who were in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. Or perhaps he does not want people to forget the horrendous things the Nazis did to Jewish people during World War II.
This film had one of the most in depth plot lines of the Woody Allen films we have seen thus far I thought. Hannah and Her Sisters had fewer jokes than the previous films but had more serious and thought provoking ideas. There were also more tragic and underlying messages throughout the movie. I also did not feel that New York was the center of this film, as I had felt with Annie Hall and especially Manhattan. Mickey does briefly mention that New York is his town and they show architecture that David presents to April and Holly. I felt that Thanksgiving took the place of New York in this film though.