Hannah and Her Sisters

Where some broach their life problems in private with a therapist, Woody Allen navigates his in public. The movie set replaces the analyst’s couch. Through his characters, he stages his own self-examination, amusing us while trying to understand himself.

As my wife pointed out, Allen’s films often revolve around atypical romantic relationships. They feel like long, single-episode sitcoms elevated by wit and larger budgets. Yet beneath the humor lies something more confessional. 

In Manhattan, Allen’s 42-year-old character drifts between a 17-year-old girl and his friend’s former mistress. In Hannah and Her Sisters, one narrative current follows Hannah’s husband as he falls in love with and pursues one of her sisters. In both films, the relationships prove fleeting. Yet Allen allows his characters to pursue them anyway, as if testing whether forbidden fruit really is sweeter. Watching now, it is hard not to wonder whether these public explorations doubled as private rehearsal for his personal life.

For a filmmaker so dependent on dialogue, it is striking how much weight his rare silences carry. Someone is always talking in Allen’s films. Yet in brief moments of stillness, the self-reflection lands harder than any monologue. In those pauses, we glimpse insecurity.

Near the end of the film, two characters run into each other in a record store. Earlier in the year, they endured a terrible date. Now they sift through albums, joke about the evening and tentatively reconnect. Nothing dramatic happens. They simply talk. For Allen, conversation is both the problem and the solution.

Perhaps that is the through line of Allen’s approach to life. It’s easy to imagine coming to Allen with your own problem. Sit down, he’d say. Let’s talk about it. The question is whether you would get a word in edgewise.