Manhattan or love

This, this is a great city. I do not care what others think. It is so extraordinary ... right? Woody Allen-Diane Keaton in Manhattan.



Kalos Kai Agathos, the Greeks said, the beautiful and good in intimate union. So what happens when the beauty and goodness, which are the same thing, knocks on your door and not respond? What happens when one is so corrupt that has lost the ability to love, truly love?

Few film starts exceed Manhattan. Woody Allen, with the precision of a scalpel, dissecting the bowels of New York offering several versions of it, each one more critical and scathing. During the first three and a half minutes, the audience's enthusiasm is contagious to his city manager, prepares to mouth like the best dishes, merges with it to feel it fully, and vibrates with fireworks culminating scene. Within a moment, the Jewish black-rimmed glasses has subjugated us again with its power of seduction by making our own the words: 'New York was his town and always would. "

Filmed in black and white 1979 with excellent photography Gordon Willis seasoned with music of George Gershwin by New York Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta teacher, Manhattan is considered one of the masterpieces of the New York director and possibly One of the most comprehensive and profound tribute to 'the city that never sleeps' has received throughout the history of cinema.

The viewer is immersed in a full story, at first, has all the ingredients of Allen's comedies: a Jewish writer, Isaac, who works at a TV show where the sickness prevalent and easy laugh, just leaving their work to write a book about his mother entitled 'The Zionist castrating "-Woody Allen, a seemingly happy marriage where he is having an affair with another woman he falls in love-Michael Murphy, Anne Byrne Hoffman, the second ex-wife Jewish writer who, after leaving, it is a lesbian and lives with her partner, educating, also the son he had in common the great Meryl Streep marriage-, a neurotic pseudo Electra complex genius seeking men - Diane Keaton as ever-charming, talks moralists in typical Amsterdam pubs, old movies, museums of modern art; psychoanalysts call them patients seeking help, night walks through the heart of Manhattan where love arises where it seemed to be accommodated only hate mixing philosophical and artistic appointments authors creating a swap unpalatable displayed as a final solution to any conflict provoking existential hilarious laughter in the audience knowing the absurdity of such distinctions, most of us have witnessed and / or starred in the that has more value as the argument that the argument itself, where truth prevails, not even seek truth, but rather seeks to provoke wonder and applause from the rest of the crowd in an exercise of pride to total mode of the Sophists.

Without perhaps meaning to, Woody Allen makes a perfect picture of Plato's cave, filled bars puzzling pseudo indifferent to the Platonic original sense of pathos, where the sense of community prevailed over that of individuality, the Aristotelian periphatos stripped of his love truth, discussions by shadows, domestic and intestine wars in which the psyche is reduced to its most vulgar, the concupiscible. In this is a great teacher, the Jewish director, to present the human being, basically as a set of leaden excrescences which is impossible to break because, in every attempt to free ourselves through the dialectic, we chained and deeper and deeper as if it were quicksand. Before it as shock therapy, only minus the humor, mockery, sarcasm, or cynicism. It seems then as if the world was a kind of Gehenna where souls are stirred together with a mixture of pity and, in turn, to the gloating and schadenfreude own.

However, it is the case in Manhattan. And it is because we have yet to discover a character. The first time we see the film, we realize the importance of Mariel Hemingway Tracy remaining until the final fifteen minutes, our eyes focused on what we believe essential, Tracy and consider it an accessory, a filling , a toy that Woody Allen Isaac used to replace then with something more valid, for a relationship 'to suit'. However, at the end or subsequent viewings, we realize the error: Tracy is the soul of the film, which gives dignity to the cops, the rest is trash.

No wonder that a character who barely speaks, and when it does, has an address outside the city going to tiptoe between conflict not to make noise, a woman whose archetype means perfect evening ride in a car horse through Central Park with Isaac, a person who cries and feels no bends, which does not hide his ignorance before the big issues, shown in total nakedness and helplessness before the vultures that surround a character ... does not appear, a priori, the soul of Manhattan but rather its antithesis.

But the Wizard of Zion we have prepared one of his best tricks. Manhattan / Isaac / Woody Allen, because all are projections of the same-they need to Tracy to complete themselves or, more exactly, to free themselves of all their corruption. And the movie, which had brought us by way of the dialectic as the only choice to order the chaos of existence, change the address and to choose the path of Eros, authentic love, to reach that Thelen. The failure of reason leads to the requirement of love to aspire to perfection, that is, the beautiful and good, the Kalos Kai Agathos Greek.

And here comes one of the most famous sequences from the films of Woody Allen: the scene of the recorder, where Isaac lists those things that makes life worth living, but only the last one that moves him names: the face of Tracy. And in that moment, Isaac has the intuition and deduction, not your happiness, the conquest of his own humanity, depends on the woman, has always been that way but he has only glimpsed at the end. Perhaps there are people whose nature will inevitably lead to Manhattan, to the material, to concupiscible, but Isaac finally gets the answer he sought throughout his life and the secret is revealed: Tracy will be a person or an idea that is the least-but the truth, the wonderful thing is that exists, exists even in a place like Manhattan, is in itself and is put there for all to proceed with his arrest and, therefore, the purification of our soul is our redemption. And everyone who has ever loved this and we feel as apodictic truth.

But Tracy is about to leave town, paradoxically, urged thereto by Isaac himself, only has a small chance to recover, to apologize for having fun using it as merely abused sexually disparaging its true beauty lay obviously in His goodness.

And now the climax of the film. Tracy's speech is far from being that of a person who harbors rancor and symbolizes a total break with all threads, by shadows, which have adorned the film. Tracy talks about moral values ​​without ever losing his humility. Again we get into the shoes of Isaac, and attended, perplexed, to the apparent contradiction, which is appealing to non-corruption, Isaac encourage me to wait until I return, to the invitation to believe more in the people ... This is at odds with the description you give of yourself Isaac at the beginning of the film and developed for a large part of it is an absolute antonymy immoral speech of the Great Babylon is the city of New York. Woody Allen Isaac is disarmed before those words, he said Manhattan worthless if they do not have to Tracy, the heart of both is empty, deserted, dark, barren without that element. Not applicable to the words, there is no counterargument to what was said by Tracy Tracy embodies precisely because the certainty of faith against the insecurity of reason.

Since I saw this movie, I've asked a lot of times about the meaning of the smile that Isaac displayed at the end, in fact, if I could talk for a minute with Woody Allen, my question is: is mocking Isaac and Tracy believed in it and will wait? The answer you give me reveal much about it.

In any case, this film transcends mere cinema. It is a work of art, pure beauty of form-Manhattan-and bottom-Tracy. Or in other words, pure goodness and pure beauty as an excuse to take narrative Love

Chapeau, iconoclastic New York, chapeau, Zionist outcast, chapeau, Wandering Jew.

...