"Sisters of Hannah" takes the life of a middle-class intellectual family in New York as the background, and takes the intricate emotional entanglements between the Hannah sisters and their respective as the main line, creating a set of living group portraits, which is a bitter tragicomedy.
Hannah is the core figure of the family, from parents to sister, husband and friends, it seems to depend on her. She is peaceful, respectful, considerate and caring for others at all times. She is very talented in art, and as an actress, she has a smooth career in her career. As a woman, her shortcoming is that she is too capable and self-reliant. She is too strong to give others the opportunity to take care of and help her. A near-perfect person like her inevitably brought difficulties to her husband, but also brought troubles to herself. This is where her tragedy lies.
Holly and Hannah are on the contrary. She often underestimates herself and is always unable to find the trajectory she should follow. She is very adventurous and often wants to use her advantages, but she is always not appreciated, so she has a career. Repeatedly frustrated with love. This is her tragedy.
Li is the most beautiful and charming. Her tragedy factor is that she is too uninspired and too dependent on others, so that she mistakenly regards her much older teacher as the home of her life; after finding that the two are not suitable, she confused with her brother-in-law. Her feelings are a mess of confusion.
Eliot is a very active person, his career is not unsuccessful, and it is not that he will not please women. It stands to reason that he and Hannah are a very good pair, but there is such a gap between them. Unfortunately, he fell in love with his sister-in-law, he could not explain his inexplicable desire, and he did not completely lose his morals, which put a psychological burden on him and Li. The two of them have a sense of guilt to satisfy their emotional hunger and thirst. Are they happy? When Rei finally got rid of him and found true love, he realized that it was Hannah that he really loved.
Frederick is a serious artist. He loves Li deeply, but he refuses to divorce his wife and marry Li. He takes care of Li everywhere, hoping that Li will treat him as the only trustworthy person; he is aloof and arrogant. Not gregarious, only indulging in one's own art, using Li as a medium for contact with the outside world. What kind of reward will life give him for such a idiot who doesn't know the world?
Mickey is obviously an important figure portrayed deliberately by the director Woody Allen, played by Woody himself. This is a very complicated personality. He is smart and capable. The problem is that his mind is too flexible, and he often produces some weird ideas, such as borrowing a little sperm from his good friend, so he has hypochondriasis. His allergic nerves made him suffer from terminal illness before he got sick, and even lost his work ability and life confidence. And his clever mind drove him to constantly search for ways to get rid of troubles. From doctors representing modern science to Catholicism and Cattlemanism, they couldn't get the answer. He floated in the illusion for a long time, and finally ran into Holly who he didn't care about by accident. This unexpected gain enabled him to resume his work and life as an ordinary person.
The parents of Sisters Hannah did not have modern higher education like their daughters, did not have their deep thoughts, and did not have the implicit way of expressing their feelings. Their distress lies in ignoring each other's value, and will only blindly complain and quarrel with each other, so their pain is not as deep as their daughters.
American film critic Richard Hickel said that the film reflects the "social fashion that emerged in the mid-1980s" in the United States. The interpersonal relationships shown in "Sisters of Hannah" can be regarded as a microcosm of contemporary American family life. While the protagonists are enjoying the prosperous life brought about by material civilization in the 1980s, they also need and miss the sweetness and warmth of human emotions, and desire to have more love and family affection in the scorching society. They are all ordinary people, with unclear ambivalence and emotions that everyone has in common. Real life is not perfect, they must choose between reality and fantasy. The protagonists finally gave up their illusions and exchanged some kind of compromise and concession for a happy ending.
Woody reveals and explores the global themes of life, death, love, desire, religion, and morality that plague mankind in his unique way. He expresses serious issues with humorous brushwork, and reveals the author's attitude towards life from time to time in mockery. And insightful philosophical thinking about social issues. "Sisters of Hannah" was ranked fourth among the 20 best American films in the 1980s, and won the 1987 Oscar for Best Screenplay. Woody Allen was selected by the film critics as the best screenwriter of the 80s. It is well deserved of.
Woody is an amazing comedy genius. From his middle school age, he didn't take the main subjects, but loved to write jokes. Soon he became an amateur joke writer, writing articles for the performers of the TV show "Wild Talk". Later, it developed into telling jokes, and his jokes came with open mouth, which made people laugh, so his comedic performance also attracted the attention of the world. Woody's ideas are constantly maturing and developing in the creative process. His early works were mostly fragmentary satirical comedies, which made people want to laugh when they saw it, and laughed when they thought of it. By 1972, after his "Sexual Secrets I Want to Know but Dare to Ask" came out, Woody began to turn his creative direction to the discussion of life and social issues. The appearance of "Love and Death" (1975) marked the maturity of his creative thinking and the deepening of his understanding of problems. He still expresses the subject in a humorous way, the difference is that he pays more attention to the inner world of people, especially women's thoughts and their confusion. It can be said that society, urban life, sex and intellectuals are Woody's inexhaustible source of creation. Since "Anne Hall" (1977), Woody has entered the golden age of his creation. His works have skillfully combined the absurdity, anxiety and hope of the modern city with proficient techniques, making people live in trivial life. , Personal memories and occasional feelings experience profound philosophies and extraordinary meanings, which make people have a series of thoughts after a belly laugh. After "Sisters of Hannah" came out in 1986, the famous American film critic Vincent Camby once praised: "There is no one in American movies. Creativity and artistic taste are similar to Woody Allen. People must go back to Chaplin and Phith Keaton, the masters who are fully responsible for their own films, to find a match with him. One of the characteristics of Woody’s work style is mocking himself. Unlike Chaplin, Chaplin shows the tragedy of the lower class, and Woody shows the trauma of the intellectuals in modern society. And in his films, he often plays little people who have no confidence. Following Woody's creative trajectory, he deserves the reputation of "Contemporary Chaplin".
Indeed, as far as the "author's film", that is, the individual copyright of the film, there is no director in contemporary American films that can produce as many films as him in the same period. Up to this film, he has made 18 films in the first 20 years, and since 1969, "Fools in Prison", he has compiled, directed, and acted 13 films, not only each film Each has its own characteristics, and many films, such as "Banana" (1970), "Love and Death" (1975), "Anne Hall" (1977), "Manhattan" (1979), "Deep Heart" (1983) , "The Purple Rose of Cairo" (1985), "Sisters of Hannah" (1986), "The Radio Age" (1987) and many other awards.
Woody's works have unique creativity and rich imagination for morals and ethics. He enjoys the greatest freedom of filming in the United States. It is difficult to make movies in the United States without being dominated by commercial interests. As Richard Hickel said, "the typical film director is a prisoner in a circle that dominates everything with commercial value." They either have to adapt to the judgments made by film companies on the main box office trends at the time, or they don't do any work, or they have to do work that doesn't suit their interests. But Woody "does his own way." His filming budget is low and the speed is fast, so it is possible to save time and money to leave room for reshoots or reshoots. He makes a film just like a writer publishes a work. He has to submit the script to the film company before filming. Therefore, when he remakes the shot, it is as if the writer calmly revised the first draft before the publication of the work, saving a lot of the director’s experience in revising the idea. Troubles in all aspects. Woody can control the fate of his own works, including advertising, distribution and marketing related to the film. He can let his film be shown in theaters through commercial channels before the film is on TV. He would take great risks in doing so, but he also enjoyed the joy of creation that other filmmakers could not enjoy. In addition, his ability to tell jokes and adaptability also solved many problems for him in filming. These abilities have won the trust and support of independent producers, especially Orion Films, and made him such a highly productive and successful filmmaker. Woody is currently the most active director in the American film scene. His works can be categorized according to themes and roughly divided into a number of "periods" in chronological order, from which we can see several coherent stages of his interest and talent development.
Woody pays great attention to learning and borrowing from other artists. He once said: "If you go to a Bergman film, you will understand that you are dealing with God’s silence. Whenever you go to watch Scorsese’s film, Everyone will find anti-social people in there.” Woody’s films are unconventional, constantly renovated and deepened without losing their own style, this is a very important reason.
The ending of "Sisters of Hannah" seems to have the taste of "reunion" that is common in Hollywood movies. Life has gone through many twists and changes and recombined. Life goes round and round, and people finally gather together again, immersed in the joyous atmosphere of Thanksgiving, just like Ivan’s "How romantic is this" played. After the film was released, Woody once said to an interviewer that this ending was a little more uplifting and optimistic than he had originally imagined, and he was not good at this kind of "optimistic" approach. However, the film’s box office revenue was at the top of the list that year, which means that after following the protagonist and savoring the bitterness and bitterness of life, the majority of viewers still need to be "optimistic".
But this does not mean that Woody Allen fits perfectly with Hollywood's style. On the night when "Sisters of Hannah" was awarded the three Oscars, Woody followed the way when "Anne Hall" won the four major Oscars eight years ago. He refused to attend the awards ceremony and went to the Michael Restaurant in New York. Attended the "Monday Night" concert and went to play the clarinet. He explained that: "If you are willing to accept other people's praise, then you have to be equally willing to accept their criticism." To him, the Hollywood lifestyle and way of thinking are unacceptable.
However, it is such a film director who has fallen in love with Hollywood, but he has been able to follow his own creative path and has achieved fruitful results. To a certain extent, this also reflects the diversified development trend of American movies.
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