It is understood as the opposite of "idyllic idyll".
Look at how Woody Allen has deliberately expressed the motif of "the individual dissolves in the city":
the whole film is shot in black and white;
those shots that deliberately downplay the characters, like the dialogue between Issac and Mary in the Astronomy Museum, the light is so dim Only the profile of the two of them is barely visible; Yale is driving through the streets of Manhattan, the one who follows the camera, can only see the street, the street lights and the tall buildings in the distance, and no one can be seen, including the talker;
hence the name of the film < Manhattan>, instead of
There is a scene in "Manhattan" where Issac's seventeen-year-old girlfriend is lying on the sofa, bare with a pair of slender and beautiful thighs, behind a book full of books of the bookcase, while Issac sits and babbles, trying to convince her not to take the relationship too seriously. The whole scene is very dimly lit, with light sources only on the left (the desk lamp of the sofa), the middle (the door gap), and the right (stair light), the atmosphere is quiet, but not peaceful, because those two redundant light sources are always interfering We, distracting us from the characters in the dialogue, create an atmosphere of indecision. -- and that's exactly how Issac, Woody Allen's type of persona, makes us feel: indecisive, cynical, neurotic, pessimistic, sarcastic, self-talking .
Woody Allen started writing jokes at 15. Write for ten years. In a scene in Manhattan, Issac was dissatisfied with the comedy show they produced, "Jesus, this is so antiseptic. It's nothing like what we talked about", the joke was too "clean" and too "preservative", unhappy, angry Resigned, "I quit. I can't write it anymore.". Chic, but then realized I was unemployed and frustrated, "i've made a terrible mistake".
Woody Allen had higher ambitions than writing jokes. The French are so arrogant and look down on American movies, but they also admit that Woody Allen is "the only intellectual in the American film industry", and Woody Allen also reciprocates, saying that his film can pay off thanks to the French. Woody Allen loves to dig at pseudo-intellectuals who seriously discuss things they don't know much about. He wrote a novel where women paid for the service of exchanging ideas with men, discussing Proust, Yeats, anthropology, Melville, etc., and talking about long and short novels at different prices, if symbolism still Had to add money, called "The Prostitute of Mensa".
In the play, when Marry and Issac first met, they have been talking at length about his views on art. Issac was disgusted and said "What a creep" behind her back, but the latter two got on well, and then Issac was dumped by Marry again. With her 17-year-old girlfriend, she tried her best to avoid developing a serious relationship at first, so she broke up. In the end, she ran over pitifully and wanted to get back together again. Back and forth. Issac has a monologue on the show, "people in Manhattan who are constantly creating these real unnecessary neurotic problems for themselves because it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable terrifying problems about the universe." And then, let's be optimistic, think about our Reasons worth living, such as Louis Armstrong's records, Swedish films, Flaubert's "Education of Emotions", Marlon Brando, apples and pears in Cezanne's paintings, crabs in Sanhe Restaurant, the face of his little girlfriend ,etc.
The protagonists on the Woody Allen screen are always a bit pessimistic and obsessed with death, such as Iry in "Annie Hall", who likes to collect books on death, and Issac is also a bit. Death is a form of ending, and "Manhattan" ends like this:
Issac wants to get back with his little girlfriend, Tracy, but the phone doesn't get through, running all the way to her place panting. At this point Tracy had packed her bags and was ready to go to the airport. Issac walks over to try to keep her, the camera cuts in from a close-up, a head-over-shoulder conversation shot, switching back and forth between two faces, one of a 17-year-old girl, and the other of a 42-year-old.
Tracy said she had to go, but asked him to wait six months and she would be back in six months.
Issac said you are naive, a lot can happen in six months, you might meet other people, you might change your mind, you might become something I don't like.
But Tracy says "six months aren't so long. Not everybody gets corrupted. You have to have a little faith in people."
Then the camera freezes on Issac's face, the hesitant pessimistic death-obsessed man hesitates for a moment , slowly revealed a smile.
So the play ends.
View more about Manhattan reviews
