(post)script: Post-Tryst (Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters”)

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:01 Erin: Welcome to Postscript. We just finished talking about Hannah and her sisters in our main episode. We talked about pretty much every major character in the ensemble except for Hannah's parents, Norma and I can't. I don't think the father ever gets a name. But anyway, the original sin of this family is their marriage. So we have to talk about that. They're the beginning of all the dysfunction. So the mother is an alcoholic, as we already touched on. Lee obviously inherited that from her mother. And Holly, it seems, also maybe has inherited this addiction problem from the mother. The father, it suggested that he has had many affairs as well. Right. That he laid everyone in stock. 0:50 Wes: Well, he accuses her of the same thing. They accuse each other of having slept with all of Hollywood, I think. 0:55 Erin: Yeah. His line is one of my favorites theater world. But, yeah, in the theater world. Yeah. He said, I can only hope that she was mine. We're talking about Hannah's as his daughter. And he says, slept with his. Or. No, her father could have been anybody in Actors' Equity. One of my favorite lines in the film. Yeah. So they're both. You know, I see their problems as being theatrical ones, but also maybe as the most obvious expressions of the kind of the root of the neuroticism that everyone in the family seems to labor under. I see everyone's problems as being fundamentally. How to put this? Sorry. Like, these are people who are very privileged and intelligent. Right. So their neuroticism seems to be a kind of. They're looking too hard or too closely perhaps, at what, for other people would be like basic, normal processes of life. Right. Their neuroticism kind of emerges from them overthinking or inventing problems for themselves out of their own privilege or intelligence or artistry or something like that. I'm painting with a broad brush here, but I kind of, you know, I kind of feel like that's most obvious in the parents relationship, where it's obvious that they love each other and they're kind of throwing these roadblocks in the way of their love for each other because they kind of. They can't deal with it, you know, so they're going out and they're having affairs or she's drinking or. Right. I think that a lot of these characters, it kind of boils down to the fact that they can't. That they just. They can't deal with something that for maybe a less complicated person, wouldn't even be a thought. Right. And so for the parents, it's like, you can't just love your wife you can't just love your husband. You have to have all these problems, right? You have to. You have to deflect that love. You have to. You can't deal with it head on. You're too complicated for that. You have to have other issues. Is that. I mean, this to be, like, serious, though. I'm sounding flippant in my criticism of them. I think this is a common problem, right? 3:20 Wes: Yeah. 3:22 Erin: Love is too much. 3:23 Wes: Love is too much. So they're creating enough friction in order to avoid collapsing into each other or something like that. 3:35 Erin: Right. 3:35 Wes: That's the only way they know how to maintain separation. We kind of talked about that with much ado about nothing. Except that witty banter maybe was a healthier version, I don't know, of what's happening. I mean, I think part of it is about age and part of it is about the big life that they've already had that's now behind them at this point in the film. It's a really nice feeling at the beginning of the film that we get as we're introduced to all these characters really deftly, because there's so many to introduce. We get introduced to everyone's characters and their problems and all in the context of this Thanksgiving scene where the parents are in the other room singing. And it's a nice kind of family feel. It feels warm, it feels good. It feels like the parents have created that kind of environment for everyone, even as we discover all the complications. So right up front, we become acquainted with Lee's, you know, problems with Frederick and her lack of a vocation or lack of money, and Holly's situation and her drug problem. All the rest of it all very quickly. The mother's alcoholism, of course, you know, it all begins with Elliot's unfaithfulness, unfaithful heart. As you know, we even hear about Mickey and Frederick, who are not there. They come up, but all within this sort of environment that I think in the beginning has been created by the parents. And the parents sort of hover over everything. And when I think. I think it's Lee who says something about how when she comes into the kitchen, about how they're going down memory lane. And then the sisters start talking about the mom, and at least she's not drinking. And at a certain point in the film, the mother is going to return to drinking and it's a crisis. And Hannah gets called over there. Let me just find that point. So this is really at the midpoint of the movie. So it's. Or no, it's. It's at least it's Hannah's midpoint of. The midpoint of her arc, where. Where she goes over there and the mother has just tried to seduce the salesman, according to the father, whereas too old. Sorry, Just too. Too old to seduce the salesman. So she got drunk, she got upset. So her two big flaws come into play here. Her desire to be still desirable at this age and flirt with people of any age, and the alcoholism. So then they get into that fight, and it's a good thing we had such a talented daughter. So we get the idea that Hannah is, in a way, kind of attempt to repair their relationship. And her perfectness and wholeness. Right. Stands in distinction to that and offsets it, the cracks in their relationship. There's that remark about how she could be anyone's, which you already pointed out. And then I think the father makes a remark about, you never know when she's going to fall off the wagon and humiliate everyone. And the mother accuses him of being jealous of the attention, and he's all, show. How can you act if there's nothing inside to come out? She was so beautiful and him so dashing. And so now we get into Hannah's voiceover and is. I think this is the only voiceover for Hannah in the film. Everyone. 7:42 Erin: Oh, is it? 7:42 Wes: Is there voiceovers? I think this might be. I don't know. Yeah. So. And when I went back to my notes, somebody else surprised because I was looking at my notes and I'm like, wait a minute. Why? Who's saying this? And I realized, oh, yeah, this is Hannah's voiceover. So she's thinking about her parents and describing how the mother was so beautiful and the father was so dashing. They were full of hopes that never materialized. And they loved the idea of having kids, but not of raising them. So you wonder what these hopes are that never materialize. Because I had had the sense that they had had some success, and they were. I started off the speech thinking that. Thinking in terms of them feeling the loss of that success as they got older and their youth and their attractiveness and all that stuff. 8:39 Erin: Well, I think they're work a day actors. You know, I think that they are. The scene starts because they were going down to film a commercial for the mayor's office. That's what they said. 8:50 Wes: Right. I see. Okay. 8:53 Erin: They're in Equity. Right. So they're working actors, but maybe they want it to be, you know, Katharine Cornell and Olivier, but they're still working. You know, they have. They're the type of people that have all the stories. 9:14 Wes: Right. 9:15 Erin: Of the great actors that they were in the company with, you know, because they played, you know, they played third, fourth, fifth string to, you know, to the Cornells, to the whoever. And so. So I think it's that they. They had the ambition to be at the peak. 9:36 Wes: Yeah. So that. That sheds a lot of light on it for me, I think I didn't get that. So. But now that. Yeah, that sheds that knowing. That sheds a lot of light on the whole movie, actually. But go ahead. 9:51 Erin: Yeah. Well, then we also have the father. One of the things I love about that voiceover of Hannah's is the fact that we think that we're hearing piano on the soundtrack. And it turns out to be coming from the father who started playing the piano in the other room. And we see them come back together over the piano. And he's quite good. Or whoever's playing it is quite good. 10:14 Wes: Right. 10:15 Erin: But one of the things that she says that we kind of glossed over, he's all show. This is the mother talking about the father now, how can you act when there's nothing inside to come out? She calls him a non person or a haircut that passes for a man, says that he could never support them. So it would be one thing maybe if she never had her ambitions, material, but for the man, in a marriage that must have started in the 30s or 40s, for a man to never become successful, for his ambitions to never materialize, that's a problem. Right. And so she maybe has little respect for his talent because he wasn't able to make it, at least not in a big way. 11:11 Wes: Well, yeah. And they've just called her. Hannah has just been called gifted by the parents. And she ends this scene in her voiceover saying, my gift was luck. 11:26 Erin: Yes. 11:27 Wes: I thought Lee was the one destined for great things. And her father is at the piano at this point. And then she's. The scene ends with her in this reverie and then the next scene at the dock, which I think we see with Lee at the dock at least a couple of times. Lee is in her own reverie at that point. So we get this really nice transition from Hannah's reverie into Lee's reverie. Although we don't know exactly what she's thinking about. There's no voiceover, but we can imagine she's thinking about the Elliot situation and even Hannah's reverie. It's a little unclear what that's about exactly. You know, we. We know this idea that. That her gift was Just luck. But that can't, you know, that can't be the focal point of what she's. She seems to be in a positive state of mind. So I don't know what she's thinking about exactly, but it's an. It. Oh, it is. Oh, she says that to them. Okay, Right. That's right. 12:26 Erin: Yeah. Because the mother answers, because Hannah says. The mother says that of anyone in the family, you were the one blessed with the tr. And then that's when Hannah deflects and she says it was luck. And she always thought Lee was the one doesn't for great things. The mother says she's lovely, but she doesn't have your spark. She knows it. She worships you. She wouldn't dare get up on stage, which is a shocking thing to say. And then she says Holly's game for anything, though. She's like her mother, the mother saying this. That really the mother is like Holly, which I think is right. 13:02 Wes: Okay, so then Hannah's reverie is a 13:04 Erin: reaction to that, I guess what it precedes that Hannah. Well, her voiceover precedes it then. Yes. And then she does have Hannah. 13:13 Wes: You get this look on her face at the end of that scene. It's just. It's a close up on her face looking angelic, I think. Space. Yeah, angelic and just. And thinking about something. And then you come to Lee in the same sort of state of mind. But. 13:31 Erin: Right. 13:31 Wes: And so. Yeah. So what is Hannah thinking about in that moment? Is she. Is she. She taking in her mother's praise or is she reaffirming the idea that her. Her gift was always luck? I think there's something. There's a truth to that, that her. That she's actually just lucky. But I don't know what you said. 13:55 Erin: Well, I would agree with that. I think it's such a fascinating question when it comes to these. This is what makes acting so fascinating because in fact, talent helps a lot, but ultimately a lot of it is down to luck. And there are a lot of forces at work which are completely outside of one's control. The idea that Hannah is the most talented one is taken for granted because she's the one with the success. Maybe she is just lucky. Holly, the mother says she's game for anything. There's a luck about that. There's a luck that because Holly is game for anything, she can shuffle through a bunch of possible identities until she finds one that hits. I think there are. I think this is really complex. The suggestion that the father hasn't fulfilled his promise. Is it because he wasn't talented enough or because he wasn't lucky? What constitutes luck by this definition? They seem to be pretty lucky people from where I'm sitting. Yeah, Right. They have a beautiful. Well, I think it's Hannah's apartment. But they have a kind of a beautiful life, an artistic life, and all things considered, a pretty happy marriage. 15:24 Wes: Well, the luck is always luckier on the other side of the. Of the what? The fence. What would the luckier luck be on the other side of. Yeah, on the other side of success. But. 15:39 Erin: Well, there's Lee's beauty. That's lucky. Right. The mother's beauty, which the father. I love. I love, love, love their conversation. Well, that's actually the second of the three Thanksgivings, because we have this. 15:54 Wes: Okay. Yeah. 15:55 Erin: Yeah. We have them being a bit high the first Thanksgiving. High spirits, I mean, and maybe a little bit precipitously high spirits. Then we have the plunge into this scene, and then they're telling stories and they're. You know, and he's saying these wonderful things about how she was so beautiful that men drove their cars up on the sidewalks. You know, like, I love that. That's such a beautiful thing to say about someone. And. And then in the final Thanksgiving, it's when he's just playing the piano and she's listening. It's a contemplative moment, and it's a quiet moment. And therefore, we are. We're calm. It's satisfying. They seem stable. Right. 16:40 Wes: She's drinking and singing, and so I like the fact that everyone's just accepted the fact that she's gonna drink. 16:46 Erin: Yeah, that's it. 16:48 Wes: All right. We're gonna just live with that. 16:51 Erin: Who knows? Maybe it's seltzer. 16:53 Wes: We can hope. 16:55 Erin: That penultimate Christmas Thanksgiving, though, is really, really a great moment. Their arc seems to have been resolved by that point because he's now expressing this apprec. Of her. She's expressing appreciation of him. We see the evidence of this and the photographs of them looking very lovely as young people. And so, you know, we believe these stories. And of course, she's, you know, of course they're both actors, so also, we know what they looked like when they were younger. But. Yeah, anyway, I just. I love that. I love that scene. I love what he says about how beautiful she was. It's like such a dream romance, you know? I mean, they are. They're work a day actors. They toughed it out, but, man, they still love each other and they have those fond memories of how beautiful and Wonderful they were when they were younger. So he's more than just a haircut. An expensive haircut at that, I think. 17:50 Wes: I think that's why I wanted to make them out to be more successful than they. Than they were, because there's such a element of nostalgia and their memories and. Which is a part of their. Their singing and playing the piano and all that, so. And that nostalgia. We talked a little bit about the role of nostalgia in love and Woody Allen films and Annie hall, but there seems to be some of that here as well. And, in fact, I think Elliot takes on that position of nostalgia at the very end of the film when he's kind of mourning and looking back on his affair with Lee. It sounds a lot like Alvy Singer and Annie hall looking back at his relationship with Annie and thinking about their good times together. Although there's not that same type of montage with Elliot. But he says, you know, he sees her and the professor, and instead of being jealous, he says, oh, Lee, you are something. You look so beautiful. Marriage agrees with you. Everything that happened between us seems more and more hazy. I acted like a fool. And then that line that I've already read about. Complete conviction that I couldn't live without you, and I put us both through the wringer. So he's sorry about that. His love for. For Hannah. So he. He moves from a position of passion, you know, and. And the kind of passion that's involved in infidelity to this nostalgic position, which is more a position of mourning and. And reflection and. And perhaps the kind of reverie in which Lee and Hannah have been engaged. Although I think, again, Lee's reverie on the dock was. Had something to do with. She was holding the E. Cummings book at that point and probably thinking about Elliot. But in any case, I think that movement from passion to nostalgia in the end is important. 20:10 Erin: I agree with everything you're saying. And I also think that the success of that movement contributes to the success that we get that they were. Yeah. Just as we already discussed. I think, you know, they're living in a successful way, like they are the parents. Integrating. Yes, the parents. 20:25 Wes: Yeah. Yeah. 20:26 Erin: I think that they're creating an environment that's beautiful for the whole family. 20:32 Wes: I think the thesis in Annie Hall was that the. That nostalgia, in some sense, is required to sustain love. There's a way in which one must look back on the past and what's lost. And as the relationship changes, there's a lot of lost. There's a lot of loss. You lose your Looks and your youth and all that. And you probably have lost out on completely fulfilling your ambitions. And then the relationship itself has been transformed. It's. There's no longer the same infatuation. In all likelihood, there's been a lot of conflict and friction. And so to sustain the relationship, you have to be able to look back on all that and not feel it, not, not chafe against that, but in a way long for it. And there's got to be a kind of bittersweet feeling in relation to the past and what one has lost in the past and not defiance, not I am going to fix this and have an affair with a younger woman like Elliot, or not a younger woman necessarily, that I guess she is quite a bit younger. But in any case, have an affair outside of my marriage or do whatever it is I can do to reclaim the past that I've lost. You know what I mean? You've got to have some kind of reconciliation with, with that. And I think nostalgia is what helps with that. 22:16 Erin: I think so too. I think, I think it also, I think, you know, in long term relationships that the, the kind of steadier, more sustaining love is what sets in. It's not going to be infatuation, but you can recall, you know, the infatuation is the thing that one can be nostalgic about while still having hopefully that sort of like, you know, the deeper current of the history, the shared experience, the love. Right. But the ability, I think, to become nostalgic about those, about that extreme infatuation, the height of that passion and to keep that integrated into one's memory is like. Yeah. To me that shows the health of the relationship at that point, really from that point forward. 23:03 Wes: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, you can be connected through infatuation in the present, but you can have a deeper connection in a way, a more realistic, loving connection that involves memories of those infatuated moments. It doesn't mean that you can completely recapture that feeling, but you think about how nice it was to have had those feelings and they can inform the more stable, realistic sort of love that is there. You know, after decades, thinking through that 23:46 Erin: comment that he makes about men driving up on the sidewalks, I think what makes that so effective is he's not even necessarily talking about his own infatuation. He's giving her, it's such a beautiful moment because what she wants is this idea that she's desirable, period. You know, like, not necessarily to him. Right. She doesn't want to. This is someone who put great store in her looks. She was probably like a Lee when she was younger in terms of the way other people related to her. And so what his compliment does is show how well he knows her, that what she wants to be validated about is the fact that everyone thought she was beautiful, you know. Right. And that's, you know, that's very, very sweet because then she gets to feel loved in the way that she wants to be loved. And he also gets to be the center of attention by telling this grand story about how, you know, and he gets to be the victor. Right. Everyone loved her, everyone thought she was beautiful, but he was the one who got her. So it's like, you know, it's just this absolutely beautiful resolution of the difficulties that she has, which is, am I still desirable to men? And of putting himself in a position of power. Yes, she is. And I'm the one who got her. And they're interdependent in that way on each other's. On validating each other and resolving those, you know, they resolve well, those difficulties that each of them has in that moment. So. Yeah, I love that. That's one of my favorite moments in a film that has like a tremendous amount of poignant moments. And then the last 10 minutes of the film, from Mickey's near death experience with the gun through the Marx Brothers film and to the end of the, of the Thanksgiving scene when Holly tells him that she's pregnant. That's maybe my favorite 10 minute chunk of a movie ever. I love that, those last 10 minutes, even though Woody Allen has said that it's too idealistic, that he wasn't brave enough to go for the sucker punch of, I guess everybody, you know, having a tragic ending. I think that's the worst thing he could have ever done. Terrible. 26:14 Wes: I mean, the whole. Yeah, it's a sweet ending. Yes. Okay, I'm pregnant. It seems very cliched. He pulls it off in a wonderful way. I mean, the whole thing is. Yeah, it's sweet and it's wonderful and the whole movie is superb. I mean, it really illustrates what a. In so many different details that we haven't even discussed what a fantastic screenwriter Woody Allen can be. Now he can be horrible too, which I do not understand because this is movie is, you know, near perfection. Like. Yeah, truly. And I feel like I, you know, I haven't fully appreciated it until this moment coming back to it, you know, just at this age. 27:01 Erin: Well, for me, you know, I don't know that it's his best, but I think that the reason why it's my favorite is because of the optimism in the ending, I think of his, of his great films, this is the only one that has what can be called a truly optimistic ending. And you know, there's an experience in that final moment of like a catharsis for all of the nostalgic, unsettled, bittersweet endings that preceded it. You know, and then he kind of then in his great films after this film, I think just go, you know, dark all the way like Crimes and Misdemeanors or even Deconstructing Harry, which I think is a great film of his and you know, Match Point and these other films, much, much darker. So I think this one, that's why this one is my favorite because it's 28:02 Wes: so 28:04 Erin: life affirming or something. You know, some, some, some terrible, some terrible term I could use there that's a little silly and. Right. But it, but it is, it fulfills the, the optimism and the, the, you know, the, the happiness maybe that's lacking from the others. And then it's this beautiful, brilliant moment before the plunge into tragedy of the later films. 28:25 Wes: So, yeah, you know, he's coming out. He has a new film out that's. It's a. In French with French actors. Did you see them? 28:38 Erin: Yeah. I'm a little skeptical at this. I think he should really hang it up because he's not going to get great people working with him anymore. And really, you know, that was. 28:49 Wes: God, what's her face? Catherine Deneuve. Is that how you feel? 28:54 Erin: No way. Really? 28:57 Wes: Yeah. 28:59 Erin: Okay, I think. 29:01 Wes: Okay, let's look at who's in this. The film is called Coup de Chance. Stroke of Luck and it has. Let's see. No, I guess I'm wrong. 29:24 Erin: Damn. Damn. I was so excited. 29:25 Wes: Is she even alive? I mean, she could be for all I know. 29:28 Erin: Of course she's alive. 29:31 Wes: I wouldn't have even the faintest idea. But. Okay, so I don't know, I don't know where I got that. I was reading press about this and somehow her name came up and maybe she comp. I think maybe she defended or complimented him or something like that. But, but in any case, I think, I don't know. As long as the films are good, I don't care who he's working with. The problem is that the spotty quality at this point. But it's his 50th film and more power to him and I. It's a travesty that, you know, it's a crime that, that he's been ostracized in this way. 30:13 Erin: But see I think his. His films are so dependent on, you know, he's an actor's director, and I think the quality of his films is so dependent on the quality of the performances. I mean, as I say that, I think, well, you know, the flaws in his bad films are not the performances, it's the scripts. Right. But still, I think that what I go to Woody Allen film for is to see, hopefully, a great script in combination with great performances by great actors. And so the more he has to kind of scrape the bottom of the barrel to find people who will populate his films, the less confidence I have that it's going to be an enjoyable film for me. 30:56 Wes: Yeah, I don't know that these are. These are French actors, so they may. I don't know where they stand in the French film world. 31:04 Erin: Yeah, sure. Part of it, I. 31:07 Wes: They might be near the top. I don't know. 31:10 Erin: Right. Yeah. Part of it is the familiarity, too, of the people that he tends to get up until a certain point, you know, like, whatever. Seeing Cate Blanchett give a career best performance in Blue Jasmine or, you know who. Like, that's part of the appeal for me is to see people I already like in a Woody Allen film. So it's. You know, this is probably not something I'm gonna. I'm gonna see unless I'm. I'm really attracted to one of the actors in it. But, I mean, I don't mean attracted in that way. 31:43 Wes: I mean, that's why I. 31:47 Erin: Forget what I said. Yeah, no, I mean, I mean, compelled by their. Their Persona, just. 31:56 Wes: Yeah, I get it. I get it. 32:01 Erin: I deserve that. Anyway. 32:04 Wes: All right, on that note, well, which next we're gonna do Winter's Tale? 32:11 Erin: I don't know if I'm attracted to anyone in that one, though, that it's 32:15 Wes: going to be all Woody Allen and Shakespeare from here on out on this show, so. 32:19 Erin: Sounds great to me. 32:21 Wes: All right, thank you. 32:23 Erin: Thank you.