The Tyranny of the Good in Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters”

Hannah supports her sisters. She’s a source of money, encouragement, and advice, and seems to ask for nothing in return. In fact, she’s so giving and self-reliant that her husband Eliott begins to believe that she has no needs. This seems to be the spark that ignites his infatuation with Hannah’s sister Lee. It also leads her sister Holly to rebel against what might be called Hannah’s regime of care, only to marry another of her dissidents, her ex-husband Mickey. Wes & Erin discuss Woody Allen’s 1986 classic, and try to figure out why those closest to Hannah need to escape her goodness to find themselves, and whether a loved one can be too perfect for our own good. 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 0:12 Wes: Hannah supports her sisters. She's a source of money, encouragement and advice and seems to ask for nothing in return. In fact, she's so giving and self reliant that her husband Elliot begins to believe that she has no needs. This seems to be the spark that ignites his infatuation with Ha Hannah's sister Lee. It also leads her sister Holly to rebel against what might be called Hannah's regime of care, only to marry another of her dissidents, her ex husband, Mickey. Today we discuss Woody Allen's 1986 classic and try to figure out why those closest to Hannah need to escape her goodness to find themselves and whether a loved one can be too perfect for our own good. 0:55 Erin: This is Wes Alwan, this is Erin 0:58 Wes: O'Luanaigh, and you're listening to Subtext. So Erin, the film is called Hannah and Her Sisters. And yet I'm not sure that we can make Hannah out to be the protagonist of the film in any typical sense. It is an ensemble film, so in a sense there are a lot of protagonists in the film, but the most passive of them all is Hannah. In that sense, she reminds me of Alyosha, say in the Brothers Karamazov, where not only he's the protagonist, but all the action and the bigger arcs happen for Ivan and Dmitri. So why is Hannah the center of the film and what role is she playing in it? We see other characters with their problems and arcs. We're introduced very early on to Elliot's or we're introduced in the very beginning to Elliot's infatuation with Lee, her lack of a direction, career wise and unhappy relationship with Frederick, Holly's drug use and failing career and lack of a relationship, Mickey's hypochondria. Everyone has a problem but Hannah. The accusation that's ultimately made against her is that she is too self sufficient, doesn't have any needs, and maybe we could even say doesn't really have any problems. So why call this film Hannah and Her sisters? Why not call it Lee and Holly and their sister Hannah? Their sister Hannah in parentheses and smaller font. 2:42 Erin: Yeah, that's a great question. I described her to someone the other day as the still center of the neurotic carousel. 2:49 Wes: Love it. Love that description. That's great. That's so perfect. She is like the unmoved mover in a way. 2:57 Erin: Yeah. But I also, I don't know, I tried to be more critical of her this time around or to try to dig in a little bit. I actually think that you know, the more critical of her you can be, the more likable she becomes, which is, you know, I think, maybe central to this question of her lack of flaws, her passivity, whatever we want to call it. I started to see a little bit more, especially in the Holly dynamic, that she is allowing herself to be manipulated, I think, in that relationship. And that this kind of mother daughter dynamic, which is a little bit messy and a little bit screwed up, is, I think, being fed in both directions, like any dynamic. Right. I think that Holly is looking to disarm Hannah. You know, when she continually comes to her to ask for her money and support. I think there's a part of Holly that wants to be validated by Hannah. She knows maybe that she doesn't deserve this validation. Right. But just in terms of the conversations around money, she says, you know, now, don't get upset. It encourages Hannah to then say, oh, you know, I know, I never get upset about this. Right. But it's a dynamic that kind of reminds me of something that someone once did to me. In the middle of this big party, a party for me, they sort of dropped an emotional bomb on me and then said, you're such a wonderful person. So I knew I could tell you this and you would understand, you know, and that made me immediately feel like I could not. Me not understanding would mean that I'm not a wonderful anymore. Right. So I played along with it and only later realized what a huge manipulation that was. Right. But it also came from my need to be thought of as a wonderful person. 4:33 Wes: I murdered someone. 4:35 Erin: Right. 4:37 Wes: It helped me live with that secret forever. 4:40 Erin: Exactly. It helped me understand, I think, some of what's going on in Hannah. I mean, does she have. She claims that she has enormous needs. 4:49 Wes: Yeah. 4:49 Erin: Does she? 4:50 Wes: That's a great scene. She's accused by Elliot in that scene of. Let's look at the actual dialogue, or really, I have. I have it in my notes here. There's been two different. This is the second Thanksgiving, the tumultuous Thanksgiving. We see three Thanksgivings in the film, and Hannah and Elliot are fighting. And in a previous scene, she's been talking to Holly. Hannah's been talking to Holly because she's upset. A script that Holly has written seems to be based on Hannah's life, and Holly seems to know far too much about Hannah's life, and that could have come only from Elliot, which, of course means that it was fed to Holly by Lee. And this is the closest we get in the film to Hannah figuring out that she's been betrayed. So the upshot of the script is that she's too self sufficient and has no needs. You're so giving and everyone relies on you, you know, and I think Hannah says, you make it sound like I have no needs or something. You think I'm too self sufficient, Holly. Now, Hannah, that's not what I meant. You know, everyone relies on you for so much. You're so giving. It's not a criticism. We love you, we're grateful. And Hannah says, you're grateful, but you resent me. And then Holly comes back with you and Elliot. You mentioned to me yourself that you and Elliot are having some problems. So Holly is trying to reassure her at that point that she understands that she's not completely self sufficient. So this accusation that's there in Lee's, Holly's script, sorry, comes up again between Hannah and Elliot where Eliot parrots those concerns. And obviously, you know, again, the script has been based on his report. Hannah asks him if he finds her too giving, too competent, too perfect, and 6:45 Erin: ultimately too disgustingly perfect. 6:47 Wes: Yeah, and ultimately he said, it's hard to be around someone who gives so much and needs so little in return. She says, I have enormous needs, which is the line that you just mentioned, which is an interesting way to put it, using this word, enormous. And then Elliot says, well, I can't see them and neither can we or Holly. This is really a climactic moment of the film, at least for Lee and Hannah and Elliot, these scenes at this Thanksgiving. So anyway, she has enormous needs, she claims. But does she? 7:20 Erin: Well, earlier in that conversation with Holly, Hannah says that she has problems. You know, she sort of admits to these problems, but she doesn't want to bother everyone. And Holly says that's the. I'd like to be bothered. These problems, of course, stem from the fact that Eliot is being kind of emotionally abusive to her. Right. Because of the affair with Lee. And prior to that, perhaps she really didn't have any problems, which is what caused Eliot to run into Lee's arms in the first place. I think that what's most interesting for me in this scene. So we have this conversation with Holly and Hannah, then we have an interlude in which the mother, I think her name is Norma, Maureen O'Sullivan, comes into the kitchen and praises Holly for her script and says that she loves the character of the mother who's just a boozy old flirt with a filthy mouth. Right? Yeah, it's a minor moment. You think it's just a laugh line. In fact, I think it casts Hannah's Reaction in a very interesting light. Hannah has a right to be upset, of course, by the content of Holly's play. But I think the contrast with her mother's, maybe self awareness or unselfconsciousness highlights Hannah's own need to control people's perceptions of her. Maybe this is why she refuses to share her problems with her sisters. In other words, she resents being perceived as having no needs, but she would do anything rather than admit a flaw or a lack that would produce a need. So maybe the question isn't, does Hannah have needs or not? Maybe the question is, will Hannah admit what those are and place herself in that position of vulnerability to allow other people in? Maybe this is all about image control for her, that she has to be the confident one, the one who takes care of everyone else, and the one who is perceived by others as being disgustingly perfect. The sad thing is that the relationship between Eliot and Lee destroys Hannah's confidence in her own control over her situation, perhaps, which then produces in her the very vulnerability that she lacked in the first place that caused Eliot to go to Lee in the first place. There are many other causes as well, you know, especially Eliot's immaturity. 9:38 Wes: Right. 9:38 Erin: But the conditions of the affair are such that it sustains the fallout, the emotional fallout, then sustains the marriage for as long as it will work out. I think there's an open question at the end of the film as to whether or not this is a long term solution, which we could talk about too. 9:54 Wes: Yeah, I think that word control that you used is an important one because by being self sufficient, and not just self sufficient, but the one that everyone relies on, she can control people in that way. And the way she controls them is not always to their benefit, or at least that's the accusation that Lee makes against her. I think when they're in the restaurant, there's the scene when they're shopping when Hannah is very discouraging about. Sorry, I'm saying Lee and I think. I mean Holly. That's the accusation that Holly makes against her. There's the scene where they're shopping together and Hannah is very discouraging about the audition. There's the scene in the restaurant where they're all having lunch, I think lunch or dinner together. And Holly is asking for more money, but now she wants to be a writer, no longer an actress. And Hannah is telling her to do something practical, do something productive, which would sounds like it would just mean having an administrative position somewhere and giving up her dreams. So Hannah herself has been artistically successful. She was in A Doll's House, right? She had a performance in that. I think the implication is that she's been successful as an artist, as an actress, and that her parents have it as well. The film begins with the parents being nostalgic. I think a lot of what happens at Thanksgiving in those celebrations involves. Well, the father is playing at the piano and the mother is. At least in the end, she's boozing it up again. She has an alcohol problem, falls off the wagon. And by the end of the film, I think it seems to be okay. But that she's doing that. Everyone has just accepted it. But the mother and the father seem to reminisce about the good old days and youth and possibility. And that kind of longing, by the way, is every. That's the kind of thing Ibsen was dealing with, I think. So they've had their own success. They're longing, you know, they're nostalgic about it. Hannah has had it, and she seems almost indifferent to it. When she's being celebrated for her success, she says, well, you know, it's nothing. I'm just gonna go back to what's important, which is my husband and the family. So she seems to. Things seem to come effortlessly for her, and she doesn't seem to care all that much about those accomplishments, the things that everyone else is striving for and being really very neurotic about, whether it's work involving work or love, she seems to be very placid about. And I think it has something to do with her being. Having become a maternal figure in the family. You get the sense that because their mother is an alcoholic and is concerned primarily with being an actress, it seems that Hannah stepped into that role. And that means that she's been both sister and mother to Holly and Lee. And that's where some of these problems are coming from. Because on the one hand, she is the provider of resources. She's the nurturer. She's the one everyone can rely on. On the other hand, there's sibling rivalry. The sisters want to be like her. They want to reach her level of success. But she forecloses that in a way, she forecloses that by getting people to depend on her, by killing off their striving, by making them passive. She's a passive protagonist. But because she's already accomplished everything and is stable, the other protagonists are striving. But they. They're stuck in the sense that they've been possessed by her passivity. If they can rely on her, they don't need to go anywhere. She keeps them within the familial fold. So I think the accusations against her are apt in a way. 13:47 Erin: The question of A Doll's House and of her playing Nora is a really interesting one because, you know, of course, that play is about a woman who seems to be the perfect housewife, but who walks out on that role in the end. And I think there's a question, just as there's a question at the end of the film, can this marriage between Eliot and Hannah really be sustained? I think there's maybe a little suggestion that Hannah might walk out on that life that she's built at some point, though I think this is at the end because we're told that she's gonna be playing Desdemona. I think it is in a public TV performance. So she's gone back to. Which I see as a really good sign. Right. I think, you know, Hannah at the beginning is fascinatingly the opposite of Nora. So she was an actress who walked away from the stage, it seems, to become a mother and to want to go deeper into this motherly housewife role. I think it's really interesting when she describes this one temporary return she's made as Nora. It seemed to me that she had. She had a successful stage career. This whole first marriage with Mickey went on, and this sperm donor best friend of Mickey who was. Who fathered the twins. And then she seems to have also adopted other children. And then the second marriage with Eliot at some point, right, she's walked away from the stage and become a housewife. But this one temporary return that she's made to play Nora in A Doll's House, she describes it as something that she had to get out of her system, which I think is a really interesting phrase, because it's as though her own needs or ambitions are a kind of virus that has to work its way out. And I think considering what's happening at home and how overly responsive, which, you know, I think is what we're suggesting, how overly responsive Hannah seems to be to everyone else's needs, one wonders if it would be better for her to have more of a stage career. Right. To become a little bit more unavailable, to detach from the, you know, as I suggested, as a kind of mutual dynamic between her and especially Holly, in which Holly needs her approval and Hannah needs Holly to feed off of her approval detachment and becoming a little bit more of a career woman and thereby deflecting the attentions of the sisters, being a little bit more unavailable to Elliot and having a different Set of needs that come with needing to juggle her time better or feeling, I don't know, insecure about her line reading or, you know, something that provides a little bit more interest that isn't quite so dialed into everyone's emotions in the family and providing for them and being there for them and, you know, wiping their mouths when they're done eating, et cetera, would be a good thing for her. And so hearing at the end that she's returning to the stage, I think is a positive indicator for the future of this marriage and for the dynamic among the sisters. 16:38 Wes: If Hannah can just stay away from real life, everyone will start behaving well. 16:44 Erin: Isn't that terrible that this is what I'm suggesting? Right. You know, that everyone just needs her to what, back off? I mean, I don't know that I agree with this as a solution, but I think that this is what the film is suggesting. You know, that as long as Hannah's ambitions are being fulfilled and this overly mothering role is being thwarted, things are going well. I think there's something to that. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's also a little sad. 17:11 Wes: Yeah. The interesting thing is that it's not that she's intrusive and smothering as a person. She's actually quite. I don't know, distant is not the word. But she's not an overwhelming presence. So the effect that she's having is somewhat subtle, maybe mysterious. She's. I called her the unmoved mover because, you know, as. As per Aristotle's description of God. Because she's causing so much commotion to happen around her. How did you put it? 17:43 Erin: The still center of the neurotic carousel. 17:47 Wes: Neurotic carousel. It's just a great description of the universe as a whole as well. So she creates all this motion in virtue of being unmoved. That's her power. There's power in not being reactive and so effective. There's power in her stability because it becomes something to emulate. It becomes something that will generate passion and idealism and other people. Oh, if I can only be like that, if I can only have that, if I can only get to that point where I'm that fulfilled and that complete and perfect as a person. But if she's too good, then it seems like something is unobtainable. And if she's too accessible, then again, you get it from her. You don't have to go out and emulate her anymore. You just rely on her. Whether it's for emotional Support or money or whatever. So that's the trick. So I think you're right about the going out and acting. I mean, as harsh as it may sound, I think you're absolutely right. She needs to enter the world of becoming. This is almost like the Christ moment. Right. You gotta put the divine into the world to get. To really get things going. But she needs to enter the world of becoming and desire and all the rest of it in order to release other people and give them some possibility of salvation. 19:17 Erin: I like that a lot. You're reminding me of another moment where Holly tries to disarm Hannah where she says, I have to borrow money. Don't get upset. You know, And Hannah says, I never get upset over that. Right, exactly. 19:28 Wes: It's such a defining moment. 19:30 Erin: Yeah. I think I yelled at the screen, like, maybe you should get upset, Hannah. You know? 19:35 Wes: Exactly. 19:36 Erin: Maybe that's what you need. Yeah. Have a little skin in the game. My God. She seems to have as much money as God, too, that she can keep funding these. 19:46 Wes: Well, her husband is a lowly financial advisor. 19:50 Erin: At least he's a glorified accountant. 19:52 Wes: A glorified accountant. 19:55 Erin: I know this film a little too well. And I know every one of Frederick's lines. He's my favorite. 20:00 Wes: I wish I were there with you. So many great lines. 20:05 Erin: Yeah. Well, let's shift a little bit because I think we're kind of glancing towards Eliot, and I'm thinking about the fact that Eliot, this affair with Lee, has unwittingly pushed Hannah into, as I already suggested, you know, the condition of vulnerability that Eliot seems to have found attractive in Lee, I suppose, read in the most positive light the emotional condition, the emotional state produced by the affair has forced Hannah to be honest about her own weaknesses, such as they are, and then allowed Eliot to return to her. But read negatively, I think we could say that this affair has actually just damaged and destabilized Hannah and that Eliot, who is only attracted, perhaps to damaged women, can therefore transfer his affections from Lee, who now has this professor that she's dating. And Lee seems to be coming into her own and becoming a little bit more confident to the wife that he has now injured and caused to become damaged. 21:09 Wes: I think that's right. You're reminding me of the standard job interview question. What's your greatest weakness? And you always have to say something that's not too genuinely a weakness. Right. You can't. Well, I'm a drug addict and, you know, otherwise I'll be a good worker. Right. You have to say something that is positive. Look, I'm such a perfectionist and. And in her case it's, you know, well, I'm just so perfect and self sufficient and have no needs. And if she can break down over that, so the reflection of perfection into itself becomes imperfection. Let's put that in a Hegelian way. It's perfection in and for itself is no longer perfection. It's. Well, maybe that's a reverse Hegelian. But anyway, by having that reflected back to her in a script and ultimately by Elliot, this idea that her self sufficiency isn't the greatest thing for everyone around her, that's her arc. I mean, that realization is it. That's her climactic moment, just knowing that. And in the external plotline, it doesn't mean a whole lot. Everyone gets. Everyone finds someone. Mickey and Holly find each other. Lee finds the professor and gets away from Frederick. The parents who've been fighting seem more content with each other. And Elliot returns to Hannah. But Hannah is not finding anyone or returning it to anyone. She's just being herself with a little bit more insight into the effect that her perfection is having on other people. And I think, you know, if you think about Elliot, who seems Michael Caine has that kind of scumbag, kind of edge to him, in my view, with women in films, just an edge. You know, he's a charming cad in one hand, but so it's a little bit different or it's a lot different. Her effect on him and her effect on her sisters. Her sisters. It's about being mother versus rival sibling. With Elliot, you're always wondering in the film really is that, you know, your wife's too perfect. That's why you need to hit on her sister and become infatuated with her sister. It's really perverse and destructive and in real life probably just would be entirely destructive and nothing could ever come out of it that was good. It would just be ruinous and the truth would out and all of that. To the extent that the film is a little bit allegorical, we can accept it. But you know, what is it that is really ailing him, as you put it, to desire. The thesis seems to be that for something to be desirable to him and perhaps to all of us, it can't be perfect and it can't be complete in itself. There must be some vulnerability there such that we can imagine the other desiring us back, needing us back. They can't just be an object of desire. They have to be a desirer. And that's what Hannah Seems to lack. 24:08 Erin: I love what you are saying about Elliot's real life application would be destructive. I never thought about that before, and I think that's absolutely right. I think that for him to embark on an affair like this in the first place would necessitate him being such a scumbag and so immature that he would never be able to have the redemption arc that the film gives him. But I wonder about this fine line maybe between vulnerability and being damaged. Does he need someone who is vulnerable and who will need him in return? Or does he actually need a woman who is damaged so that he can feel like a rescuer? That is, I think, a fine line. And we're all damaged to a certain extent. But I think that the extent to which he needs that level of imperfection or of difficulty is disturbing. Which leads us into maybe a conversation about Lee, which I want to get to, but before I do, I was thinking about the fact that Mickey and Elliot kind of split the atom, if you will, of the Woody Allen Persona in this. You know, like, normally, before you go 25:15 Wes: to that, I just want to stay on Elliot for one second because you said something about you reminded me of the fact that Elliot. There's a significance to his being a financial advisor because he is a provisioner of goods, and Hannah is the one who provides the goods. She's the source of goods and nurturance and all that. She's the big. She's the divine or the maternal figure, and he's the provisioner. And that's what makes him so lowly, in a sense. This is what the stigma of just. In this community of people who are artistic, of just being a financial advisor who's focused on money and the practicalities of life. Of course, he turns out to be very cultured. He's talking to Lee about, like he recognizes a Bach concerto. Is that what it is? 26:06 Erin: Yeah. 26:07 Wes: You know, and can name it. Most of the people in the film are very, very cultured, whether they're a financial advisor or not. And at a certain point, Mickey calls him a loser, which is an echo of Holly's accusation in the beginning of the film that a certain person that Hannah wants to hook her up with is a loser. And then in a climactic scene, you only hook me up with losers. The idea is that Hannah's goods aren't always. That she's foisting substandard goods on people. It turns out that this is the thing that Holly's gonna have to get over. She's gonna have to get over this idea that all these men who might actually make good partners are losers, and that's the only way she can end up with Mickey, who she's already rejected as a loser in the past. But in any case, there's something to this idea that Elliot is actually a loser because he's successful in these more practical terms. And it's the domain in which Hannah functions as well. So she also functions as an artist. She has both sides. And the way he gets out, the way he transcends that position of being simply mundane and a provisioner of goods, the way he can be something more, is to be involved in this infatuation with Lee in the first place and ultimately to induce some vulnerability in his wife, or as you're putting it, damage. And I'm trying to think through the vulnerability versus damage question that you've. Does he need to damage her in order to feel like more than his handmaiden or his, you know, the provisioner of the goods that she has? But in any case, we could come back to that later. You were going to talk about the splitting of the. 27:51 Erin: Yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, I think that maybe this is braided with that, because one wonders what kind of appeal Eliot would have for a woman like Hannah, if we're to take seriously that Hannah is this great dramatic talent which strains credulity a bit for me, because of her placidness and kind of her opacity. Right. Like, she's not. 28:13 Wes: She's remote. 28:15 Erin: Yeah. And she doesn't walk around like her mother does. The mother, I believe, could play a great stage actress who is extremely dramatic. Right. And has a great deal of flair. 28:24 Wes: The mother is histrionic, and Hannah is the opposite of that. 28:28 Erin: Right. And so I suppose I have trouble believing that Hannah has access to those parts of herself for the stage. Right. That she doesn't seem to have access to in her private life. But this question of losers, I mean, you know, Holly's right to suggest that Hannah is hooking her up with losers because Hannah's hooking up with losers, too. You know, Hannah has terrible taste in men. What appeal does Eliot even have for her for someone of her particular gifts? I struggle to. I mean, it's Michael Caine. Okay, sure, that makes it a little bit better. But prior to that, she was married to Mickey, and actually, Mickey, in a way, because he's a writer for tv, makes a more natural kind of match for Hannah in terms of the fact that they're both involved in performing arts and. Right. A writer and an actress are a more natural combination. Than not. She seems to have gathered this collection of the dynamic in the relationship that Eliot needs is the wrong way around. So he's the loser and Hannah is here to rehabilitate everyone. What Eliot wants is to be in a position of superiority where he can be the rehabilitator, even if that means he's going to wound you to then rehabilitate you. But it seems that Hannah needs this dynamic even in her men of these losers, to help them along in their development. 29:44 Wes: Yeah, I think ultimately, as I guess I just said, Holly has to be less stringent in her requirements for men. She comes back to someone she's already rejected because she's so discriminating, let's put it that way. 30:00 Erin: Yeah. 30:01 Wes: She hated Mickey. And then they run into each other again and they turn out to be perfect for each other. They discover that they're perfect for each other. 30:08 Erin: I think that's true for Holly, that she needs to be less stringent. I think that. Not that Hannah facilitated this. Maybe if I really thought about it and could draw some sort of squiggly line back to her, maybe I would find one. You know, Mickey did need to improve. Right. In order for him to be in a position where he could be with Holly. Right. Just like Holly needed to find something that she could actually, you know, that actually resonated with her, something that she was really good at for her to be in a position to find someone. Right. So they both needed to improve. I don't know that we could say that Hannah facilitated that. Maybe she did. By divorcing Mickey and getting. Putting him in a position where he could find the right sister, as Mickey 30:50 Wes: will be in mysterious ways, you know. 30:51 Erin: Exactly. Exactly. 30:55 Wes: Asketh of Hannah and you shall receive it. 30:58 Erin: Even if it's her ex husband, Hannah from heaven. Yeah. I don't know whether or not we can make this argument that, like, she's rehabilitated everybody to shift a little bit just to this idea that, like, Elliot and Mickey normally would be fused together in a Woody Allen character. I mean, do you think that's correct? Like the Elliot traits. So like the affair, you know, the desire to the midlife crisis or something like that, which is represented by wanting to have this affair. Escaping impending old age, et cetera, would usually accompany the Mickey traits of the midlife crisis in the form of a crisis of faith and an obsession with death. 31:39 Wes: Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, it's a big ensemble cast, and it's amazing that the film can handle so many characters with their own arcs. And do it so deftly. But as you point out, both Mickey and Elliot are in search of meaning. And I suppose everyone in the film isn't away meaning through love or work or some combination of the two. Or in Mickey's extreme case, and I'm not calling religion extreme or philosophy, in Mickey's extreme case, he has to go to the philosophy books and then to religion to try and solve his existential crisis, which is induced by his extreme neuroticism, his hypochondria, his brush with the idea that he has the quote, unquote, classic symptoms of a brain tumor, which turns out to be a ringing in your ear. 32:32 Erin: Yeah. 32:33 Wes: And then finding out that in fact he doesn't have a brain tumor, which turns out to be even more traumatic because then what's, you know, he came close and escaped death, but he definitely will die, so what's the point? A lot of echoes of Annie hall in this film and the typical Woody Allen schtick. So his existential crisis is more obvious and funny and expansive than that of the other characters in the film, who all seem to be having their, you know, some variation on an existential crisis. And that's part of what makes him work so well in the film, even though for most of it he's kind of on the periphery with his own narrative. He's on the sidelines until he comes in at the end. But his. His existential crisis is what the others are going through writ large. And I think you're right, Elliot and him could have been combined, might ordinarily have been combined, but in this film, Elliot is not the typical Woody Allen character. Just the fact that he's a financial advisor. Right. Woody Allen is thought of the most sort of ordinary type of occupation for him. He's wealthy, he's successful, he's even cultured, he understands the arts, he knows about the arts, but he can't be an artist. So that in this. Among this group of people, despite his success, in practical terms, he's not necessarily going to be thought of that highly. He's in a. He's in a lower caste, in a sense. And his problem in his mind revolves strictly around being enamored of being infatuated with this woman. It doesn't go so far as to, you know, he doesn't think, oh, should I really be a financial advisor? Or am I going to get ill? Am I going to die? Or any of the other. All of the neuroticism. Not all of neuroticism. There's plenty of neuroticism but, you know, the extreme comedic neuroticism that's not there with Elliot. He's kind of simple. He's a simple guy in a way. And the movie starts with his passion. He's more straightforwardly passionate than I think a Woody Allen type would normally be. He can say, God, she's beautiful. And he's complaining to himself in his mind about what's going on a bit. He's smitten, he's stricken. But it revolves again, strictly around the infatuation. And at the end, when things come full circle, he can be somewhat nostalgic about the relationship and say, oh, what was I doing? He says something like, I had the complete conviction that I. He's addressing her in his fantasy again at the end of the movie, addressing Lee in his fantasy and said, I had the complete conviction that I couldn't live without you and put us both through the wringer. And Hannah, you know, I realized I love her more than ever. His choices between security and love and maybe the boredom that that entails and then the excitement of infidelity and someone new, someone more flawed. I guess. So, yeah. 35:31 Erin: I love the fact that you call him simple because that's exactly my thought. You know, I hate that scene. I mean, I love it, but I hate it, you know, hate that scene when he's in his, you know, with his analyst and he says, for all my education, accomplishments and so called wisdom, I can't fathom my own heart or whatever. And it's like, yes, he can. You know, he's just way simpler than he wants to admit. You know, he just wants to have his cake and eat it too. Just like any, you know, any of these guys that are just looking for some excitement and the convenience too, at the end of this renewed happiness that he finds with Hannah. Of course, it coincides exactly with when Lee ends it. You know, he suddenly has this realization that he loved Hannah all along, which is so convenient considering that Lee has said at the middle Thanksgiving, I think it is right. Is it the middle Thanksgiving scene which occurs very late in the film, the two Thanksgivings back to back almost, you know, that she's found someone else and that she wants to move forward with him. Because by the time of the next 36:29 Wes: Thanksgiving, that's the climax, really, of the film. And the third act is that second Thanksgiving. Yeah, both of the two final Thanksgivings are crammed together in the third act. 36:40 Erin: You're also kind of making me consider the fact that, yes, it's a large ensemble cast, but there's Tremendous convenience in the fact that Elliot goes for one of Hannah's sisters. And it's a film that revolves around the family. Right. So everything stays within this large but sort of incestuous familial situation. 36:59 Wes: I think the keeping it in the family is a very efficient way to go as a lover or a filmmaker. But go ahead. 37:06 Erin: And one of the things you're reminding me of is the fact that I think Woody Allen has mentioned, obviously the film functions very novelistically with these title cards which kind of divide the film into ch. And I read somewhere that he wanted to produce a film in film. The sort of effect that Anna Karenina's split has, where you have Levin and his story, his crisis of faith on the one hand, and then, you know, the dynamic with Karenin and Anna and Vronsky, the love triangle in the other part of the novel. But what I find, you know, really interesting about the way that the film functions is that the family is kind of like its own tractor beam pulling everyone back in. I think there's something tremendously appealing about this family. So I understand it very well. Maybe they're not so appealing as I think this is the reason why this is, admittedly my favorite Woody Allen film is because I love this family. And I love the fact that the film is built around these dramatic tent poles of the Thanksgiving scenes, which, like, anybody would want to go to these parties. Right. But notably, of course, Mickey is absent from the first two Thanksgivings because he's outside of the family. And, you know, the relationship with Holly allows him to make an appearance at the final Thanksgiving scene to be pulled back in to the family, to the fold. And I wonder if Hannah, you know, comparing her to God, if she represents something that the family offers writ large, which is, you know, a sense of religious type, belonging and community, which Mickey has been ostracized from. And perhaps that's part of his whole mental difficulty in the first place. And then he finds his way back into community with others. Hypochondria is a very solipsistic kind of, you know, mental problem. And so when he goes to the movie theater and has this first communal experience and sees what but the Marx Brothers, another family on screen. It's just occurring to me. Right. 39:11 Wes: This is great. Yeah. 39:12 Erin: He then is able to kind of rejoin the land of relationships relating to other people and of thinking about something more than just himself, even though he seems to have pretty humorous parents of his own. 39:26 Wes: Yeah. No, that's very good. I hadn't thought of that. The return to the Family to the community is the thing that he was looking for. I mean, how does he put it? He seems to solve his existential crisis before he runs into Holly again. And as you pointed out, in a way, they both solve things, and that makes it possible for them to get together. I'm just looking for the way he describes this. So this is. I was just gonna give the moment where, sort of the upshot where he says, what if the worst is true and there's no God and you only go around once? Don't you want to be part of the experience? Stop searching for answers and that you're never gonna get and enjoy life while it lasts? And maybe there's something more, and that maybe is a slim reed to hang life on, but it's all that we. All that we have. So he's come to terms with this idea that he's not going to find an absolute answer that he can lean on. And there's a parallel, of course, to the sisters getting away from having to lean entirely on Hannah and be completely dependent on her. So there's the question here of autonomy and whether the search for meaning has to compromise that in the sense that you find an absolute belief that you immerse yourself in, or whether you can believe to some extent, or maybe even be an agnostic, which just sounds like what he's come to and still have what you need to live and keep moving and to be sustained but not be weighed down, maybe not be sucked into the vortex. Whether it's religion or whether it's the fantasy of being a great artist or the fantasy of love, all of those things have to be, maybe have their proper place. You don't discard them, but they have to have their proper place in order to preserve some sort of autonomy. And then it's in that position that Mickey and Holly can find each other. Of course, Holly, you know, for Holly, it is success. I mean, maybe it's a bit different with her. Right. Because she's finding success, and that seems to be what stabilizes her. I don't know. I was trying to relate this back to what you were saying about community and family, because that is, you know, I'm trying to square these two things or maybe integrate them. 41:54 Erin: Sure, yeah. 41:55 Wes: It's not just resignation to not knowing the answers to life. And it's not even just the realization that, okay, I found. I just have to find a good woman. And that is the key. But I think, yeah, what you're saying about this larger idea of community is the key part. But Go ahead. 42:12 Erin: Yeah, I think read straight or maybe, you know, ungenerously, we can argue that, well, at the end of the film everything's solved because everybody's now in a happy relationship. That that's all you need, right, as you suggest, to find a good woman. I think what that's really about is about keeping things in balance maybe, right. That each one of these characters is neurotic because they're out of balance in some fundamental way. And that getting into this series of relationships and of things, finding what it is that they need to satisfy whatever was out of balance in the various ways that you're suggesting stabilizes them in such a way that allows them then to relate to others and to have positive relationships. So that what we're looking at is not the solution, but the post solution state of affairs, right? These people have been able to work things out and therefore to be in good relationships with other people. The person we haven't really talked about though, that you brought up is Holly. I don't know that she wants. I mean, I think success is certainly a word for it, right. But I think that she feels inadequate. That's, you know, her fundamental problem. Lee does too, to a certain extent. Right. But I think Holly really, really feels inadequate. And I think the cocaine addiction is maybe, you know, a symptom of that problem. Something like a desire for self sabotage being expressed in that. Right. So she's on this continual quest to find herself and is taking all these detours to try to do that and maybe to kind of prevent herself from being found, if you will. And the detours also require that she's constantly in debt to Hannah, which is the exact situation that she doesn't want to be in. She doesn't want to be beholden to Hannah, she wants to be out on her own. But she keeps putting herself in the situation where she needs Hannah and perpetuates the sort of self hatred cycle there. And so I think that what she gets in the end, or what qualifies as success for her in the end is just having found something that she is good at, having found a role that she can play that will fulfill her, keep her out of the clutches, the maternal clutches of Hannah, and standing on her own two feet and give her something that she can say is her domain independent of everyone else. 44:37 Wes: Yeah. Through most of the film you just get the sense that she is just gonna be this tragic, self destructive character and that she has these pie in the sky impractical ideas that she's getting money for one Minute it's catering. Next minute, well, it's also acting at the same time. And then, no, I'm not gonna be an actor. I'm gonna be a writer. That's like that Arrested Development moment where Tobias wants to be an actor and then the little giggle afterwards. But it's a nice touch to the film that this actually turns out to be a real calling for her, that she actually turns out to be a good writer and that she hasn't just been searching in vain or being naive and unrealistic in the pursuit of her dreams, that she has just been temporarily down and out. So I'm trying to think through whether it's success that is transformative for her or if so, what that means. Exactly. Is it because she's. Because for the average person, the idea that they need to be a great this or that, especially a writer or a actor, is not the most practical solution for her life. And perhaps one. You know, look at a film like this and be. Look at it quite skeptically. But I think what I was getting out of what you were saying was it's not that, per se. It's just the fact that that, for her, turned out to be a grounding thing. Not because she turned out to be the greatest writer, necessarily, but because she found her independence through it. And she could have found her independence through any number of different avenues and channels, but it just happened to be that one. And I think that's right. 46:29 Erin: Yeah. That idea of independence, too. I'm thinking about the fact that she's hooked up with April for so much of the film. 46:35 Wes: Yeah, right. Like Carrie Fisher being very, very underhanded. Yeah. 46:41 Erin: Yeah. Gosh, it's hard to hate her. We see that Holly is called April, 46:45 Wes: and it's an interesting. Yeah. But anyway. 46:48 Erin: Oh, why? 46:49 Wes: I don't know. I just thought there must be something to the fact that April's the cruelest month or something. Or the. 46:55 Erin: Oh, nice, nice Springtime. And Holly's winter Christmas debt. 47:01 Wes: Yes, exactly. 47:04 Erin: That's interesting. 47:05 Wes: So April is the thaw. Maybe. I don't know. But yeah. Steels. What's his face? 47:12 Erin: Yeah. Sam Waterston. 47:13 Wes: Sam Waterston. What's his name? 47:16 Erin: David. David. 47:17 Wes: Richard. David. 47:17 Erin: David. 47:19 Wes: So steals, you know, wins the audition, you know, steals the audition, steals David just really. Wow. 47:25 Erin: Very destructive relationship. They're very competitive with each other, obviously. And then I wondered this time around if David, you know, when they first meet him, I thought, is he negging them? Because remember when he. When he asked them, he compliments their food, but then he Asked them if this is their first catering gig. 47:44 Wes: Well, also, he says you're far too attractive to be caterers. 47:47 Erin: Yes. Right. 47:48 Wes: Which is like a perfect neg. Yeah. 47:50 Erin: Yeah. So, you know, he's kind of terrible and exactly the, you know, the wrong guy for Holly. It's lucky for her that he can 48:00 Wes: identify his prey, identify vulnerability. And knows how to exploit it. And takes them both out on a double date. 48:08 Erin: Oh, my God. That is the worst. That is just the worst. And also the best. I mean, I love that montage of buildings over Bach's double violin concerto. It's sublime. But. 48:18 Wes: And then April saying something intelligent about architecture. And then the whole thing about who's gonna. Who's gonna be dropped off first, which is really wonderful. 48:27 Erin: Oh, yeah. Meanwhile, I don't know how anyone could make Carrie Fisher look that unattractive, but they manage it. She looks like she's. That scene. Is she wearing a flight. Is that what that's called? Or the Garrison cap that she has. She looks like she's parachuted over enemy lines or something. And she's wearing that cap and the leather jacket combo. It's so bad, anyway. 48:52 Wes: Oh, really? 48:53 Erin: That scene is so painful when she's. When Holly is sitting in the backseat and we hear her voiceover after it's been decided that they're gonna drop Holly first. And she makes that comment about regretting telling some roller skating joke about the Guggenheim, which sounds. It actually sounds like a really cute joke. 49:10 Wes: And she calls herself a loser in this scene, too, by the way. Yeah, go ahead. 49:14 Erin: She puts herself down. I find it very, very painful. She says she can't tell jokes that only her mother and Hannah can, but she kills them. Yeah. It's just obvious that she hates herself. She says she'll go get into bed and just take an extra Seconal or whatever. She's like, okay, Judy, that's pretty distracting at that point. 49:30 Wes: She's trying to comfort herself. Yeah, I'll just go have some me time with some drugs. 49:36 Erin: Yeah, right. You know, maybe that's a. Maybe it's okay that she pulls herself out of it. Maybe that's actually indicative of the fact that she'll pull herself out of the situation in the end. But I just find that really difficult to watch that whole scene. 49:49 Wes: And it's an interesting counterpoint to Lee's little reflection in the cab where she's just been. Where she realizes that Elliot has been flirting with her earlier in the film. 49:59 Erin: Yeah, Lee's kind of the worst. Cause she knows she's known this whole time. And she's even lying to herself in voiceover. That's how I'm reading that. 50:08 Wes: This is actually what I would call the inciting incident of the film where it's about nine minutes in and she's, you know, Elliot has a crush on me. I wonder if he and Hannah are happy. And she has a buzz from flirting, that's the key thing. And complains about Frederick. 50:26 Erin: But if you watch that first scene, this is why I think Lee is so, so not innocent. I won't call her guilty. But we see how subtly Lee is keeping Elliot interested in her. Right. She praises him for the attention he pays her by suggesting some book that she was meant to find particularly meaningful. Right. And then maybe she's not entirely aware of it herself, but she puts this image of her naked portrait into his head. I find that to be extremely inappropriate to do to your brother in law. Right. And so I think she knows. She knows and she doesn't know. I think Lee is an interesting character because I think that for someone who is a recovering alcoholic, she acts as though she's still an alcoholic. I think she acts anesthetized. I think she's numbing herself with men now rather than with alcohol. And she gets off on this idea that she's the muse to a competent male artistic figure. I think that's the only way she knows how to relate to fellow artists in a way that doesn't put her in competition with Hannah. Maybe even kind of reflects the relationship with Hannah in which she can be the pretty sister, the beautiful sister that maybe Hannah draws upon in her imagining this, of course, in her dramatic performances. 51:46 Wes: Perhaps it's interesting to compare Lee and Holly in a way. They are in very similar positions because they're not successful with in work or love. But it's manifested actually in very different ways. So Holly has ambitions, she just is not making them work out. Whereas Lee still doesn't know what she wants to do when she grows up and is talking about taking courses at Columbia. Holly is looking for a man. Lee has one and he's seems to be a very well respected artist. But also he's an asshole. So maybe not an asshole. He's curmudgeonly. We'll just call him curmudgeonly. So he's curmudgeonly and older and doesn't want to be around people. So she has a. In that relationship. She has a kind of problem on her hands. But she's not as neurotically wound up as Holly. She's not bouncing all over the place. I like the way you put it. I think you said anesthetized. I had a similar. She's got kind of a dreamy quality. Got a kind of sedated quality to her. She's happy just to be attracting men and doing that as her. She doesn't seem to be thinking too hard about what she wants until she's knocked out of her orbit with Frederick by what happens with Elliot. And then she can. It seems like that's the jolt she needs and so she can actually go to school and meet a professor she likes and kind of move on. But she is. Yeah, she's on autopilot until some external eventuality can jolt her out of that. 53:31 Erin: Yeah. I think, you know, as far as Frederick is concerned, I'll give him credit for the fact that he, you know, he says something really annoying like he's in this period in his life where he just can't be around people, you know, which is eye roll. But. But he has the self awareness to know that and therefore to stay away so that he doesn't become unpleasant to people. So I'll give him that. You know, he really has no right to be with Lee for a lot of reasons, but he's extremely perceptive and obviously very, very brilliant. And he's Max Von Sydow. On top of everything. He's an artist and he's Max Von Sydow. Um, I really. 54:08 Wes: The name like that. Such a great name. 54:13 Erin: It is a great name. I find the scene when he immediately perceives the affair and the contrast between his reaction to that and Elliot to be chilling. And I think he. Frederick is an extremely sympathetic character in that moment. It's just a heartbreaking scene. 54:35 Wes: Yeah. I think Lee has just been walking in the rain and she comes back to Frederick having just watched a television show about Auschwitz. Is that what we're talking about? And then he starts lecturing her about, you know, the question isn't why, how did this happen, but why doesn't it happen more often? Little bit of the voice of Woody Allen there. And then he says it does in subtler forms, which I think we can infer. He's talking about the way artistic vitality maybe is squashed by the world. You know, you could hear him going off on capitalism or something as well. So he gets. Goes. You know, the whole culture, people watching wrestlers or preachers and. And she tells him to lighten up and doesn't want to listen to one of them. You know, she's not in the mood for his reviews. Of contemporary society. And then he says this very condescending thing, which is not actually very sympathetic about completing the education he started five years ago. Maybe, maybe it is sympathetic in a sense that he sees his role as limited. He knows she's gonna leave him one day. He says that several times, right, I always knew you were gonna leave me. And he sees, what does he have to offer? Well, he has to offer this education. Once that's over, right, there's nothing to keep her there. And he even says, when you leave the nest, I want you to be able to face the real world. It's like he's preparing a child to leave home and preparing himself for inevitable loneliness. So I think you're right the moment. It's very touching when he says, I always told you you would leave me. Does it have to be now? You're my whole world. You're my only connection to the world. But I think the other interesting part of that is this contrast that Woody Allen is creating between artistic passion or real deep engagement with artistic ambition and being part of the world, being connected to the world, being able to enjoy ordinary things, being able to be more like Elliot in a way, and just inhabit the mundane and tolerate the fact that rich people want to match your paintings to their couches and all of that stuff. So, you know, I think that's a dilemma that is often somewhere in the shadows in many Woody Allen films. This worry about the conflict between the social connection and being in the real world and then being an artist and often la-la land. And how do you reconcile the two? You get a little bit of that. You get kind of a hint of that in this film in the character of Frederick. And more strongly, I think you get it in Holly because she seems to be floundering because she's devoted to the idea of becoming an actress at first and then a writer. But on the other hand, you have characters like Mickey and Hannah who have done very well for themselves as artists, not just succeeding from the standpoint of status, but obviously from the standpoint of financial success and self sustainability. So it's an interesting. I don't know what else to say about that. That question seems to come up in Woody Allen films despite the fact that Woody Allen himself obviously saw so much success as an artist and often has characters that are much like him in his films who are enjoying the success of being a TV producer or whatever, comedian or TV producer and some other kind of artist that could be right there in the film. 58:03 Erin: Yeah, I think Frederick, though, is an extreme case of the artist, you know, he's the, you know, the solitary figure on the mountaintop, you know, I think his level of artistry we're meant to see as being above the more quotidian success of a TV writer, you know, which is by definition, I think, more engaged, obviously, with people. And it has to be responsive to standards and practices. Right? Yeah, Right, right. 58:31 Wes: Excellent. Yeah. 58:32 Erin: And same thing with Hannah, though. Hannah's a little elevated from Mickey because she's in the theater. Right. Frederick is in a category all his own. I think that's going to be more fraught. And the nature of painting is so solitary. I think that what you're talking about with this moment, the poignancy of this moment with Lee is that he does have this realization that he needed to be more engaged in the world, but he has it too late. Right. He says, God, I should have married you earlier or right away or something like that when you wanted me to. Right. He should have, you know, in this Hannah way. Right. Put some skin in the game. He should have entered into the world of becoming, Is that right? The way you put it. Right. He should have. He didn't. He stayed in this realm of ideas with Lee and now he pays for it. Of course, in the end, when we see the guy that Lee is with visually, you immediately see that that is working and that's the right guy for her. Right. The fact that Frederick is so much older and, you know, kind of odd looking in his great Max von Sydow way is cantankerous. Yes, yes. It's a visual mismatch as well as a, you know, visually, it's doing some work, I think, to show us how mismatched they are in reality as well. The kind of concern that, you know, Woody Allen doesn't have when he's matched up with actresses. So we see that that was wrong. But I suppose, yeah, the poignancy of that moment comes when he realizes that he should have invested more in reality and less in this realm of ideas. And his pain, the depth of his emotional pain is a, you know, as I think I mentioned before, is really stark contrast to when you cut to Eliot going home and sleeping next to Hannah thinking like, oh, Lee, what a volcano. Wasn't that a fulfilling experience? You know, he subsequently have a crisis where he wants to call her and break it off. Right. But he has to kind of work his way there. And the self satisfied little voiceover coming on the heels of Frederick's pain, deep pain, is. You see how small and simple Elliot is. Right. And how truly superior Frederick is. I think. 1:00:57 Wes: Yeah, that's a very good. Those are very good points. Yeah. Do not reduce him to just being the curmudgeon. He's definitely more substantial and ultimately more of a mensch than Elliot. 1:01:10 Erin: Yeah, I think that's right. 1:01:11 Wes: But so I think it's time to move to post script. What are we going to talk about in post script? 1:01:18 Erin: Maybe the parents. We didn't get to the parents that much. 1:01:21 Wes: Let's talk about the parents. All right. 1:01:23 Erin: Thank you, thank you. 1:01:34 Wes: [email protected] subtext Also, this podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. airwavemedia.com airwavemedia.com.