Manhattan

Oscar nominations announced tomorrow - yay! But for now, I'm going to talk about one of the latest and most definite additions to my Favourite Movies list, Woody Allen's Manhattan. I say latest - I watched it for the first time with Shu last summer and love it more and more every time I see it. It's so beautiful and romantic, in the self-deprecating, non-sentimental way that's so classically Woody.



This is the classic opening scene, and I imagine it brings a lump to the throat of any Manhattanite who watches it. What a love letter. Or rather a poem. In June I'm going to New York for the first time with my family and you bet this'll be on my mind. Woody Allen and F. Scott Fitzgerald have given me this indelible image of the city as a big, grimy, wounded heart, bursting at the seams with love and sadness and life... I wonder what I'll think.

But my real favourite part of the movie is the ending, which is so ambiguous and strangely heart-soaring and makes me want to cry. The emotional punch it packs is thoroughly earned throughout the course of the movie, so I guess one has to watch the whole thing before this makes any real sense (so go!). Woody is lying on his couch, depressed, and starts listing all the things that make his life worth living... "Tracy's face"... and the Gershwin music swells up and it's all tragic and sweet and grand at the same time and he remembers that Tracy's leaving for London and he takes off... and he finally finds her about to leave, looking so grown up but also so young and he begs her not to go because he's afraid she'll lose that special thing about her that he loves; finally he understands that the only thing that can make him happy is real genuine love in the face of the awful loneliness of growing old; and then she says (and like a big sap I kind of wait every time to hear these lines), "6 months isn't so long. Not everybody gets corrupted. You have to have a little faith in people."
And he looks at her, full of doubt. And then he smiles. Sunrise over the city skyline. Oh my god, it's so perfect.