Annie Hall (1977) Review

I know it's been quite some time since my last posting but due to an overwhelming class and finals schedule I didn't even have time to do such basic things as getting at least 6 hours of sleep per night or eating on a regulated schedule. Of course that includes watching movies as well, and it's been about 2 months that I watched the Woody Allen classic "Annie Hall". But now I am catching up and there is probably going to be a good amount of postings over the next days and weeks about all the movies I've seen recently but didn't have time to write about yet.

First let's think about Woody Allen himself. He's probably not what you would call hip nowadays and even though he won his fourth Academy Award this year for the pleasantly charming and heartfelt "Midnight in Paris" he is far from being the man of the hour. But bear in mind, back in the 70s this guy was the shit! Starting out as a stand-up comedian and eventually getting into screenwriting, directing and acting he reached his first milestone with today's movie "Annie Hall", the film that beat out "Star Wars" at the Academy Awards for Best Picture (yeah, I know, I'm a sucker for the Oscars, deal with it).

Quite possibly Allen's most cherished work to date, "Annie Hall" is about comedian Alvy Singer (Allen playing practically himself) and how he falls in love with artsy Annie Hall (a spot-on Diane Keaton). We see their ups and downs, always accompanied by Allen's witty trademark dialogue, sometimes deep and philosophical, sometimes just pure silliness. While the film doesn't have a very strong narrative (boiled down it is basically "just" a romance) Allen succeeds at looking past genre traditions. This romance is not always pretty, not always happy but it feels deeply honest and lovable, a treat that becomes rarer and rarer in films like these. This is not a chick flick, it's a film for grown ups who are not satisfied with shallow characters and lazy happy endings.

Combined with inventive and (even for today's standards) refreshing ideas in the visual department (one scene is played out with actual animation, another sees them having sex while Annie's soul is sitting next to the bed to space out and talk about everyday problems) one can see why "Annie Hall" receives all the praise. If you can't stand Woody Allen you probably won't be turned into one of his followers afterwards but for everyone else this is a timeless classic worth revisiting.