'Manhattan' is a fascinating, sometimes cringe-inducing re-watch

1979's Manhattan was always one of my favorite Woody Allen movies, but now in the wake of resurrected allegations about the writer-director-actor's personal life and his track record of coveting much, much younger women have rendered the movie 'problematic' at best and unwatchable at worst.

Curiously, although its a meandering, largely plotless black and white film focused exclusively on a very isolated, financially and intellectually elite sliver of New York City, it's one of Allen's most commercially successful films, even if the director himself has said he disliked it so much he practically lobbied the studio (United Artists) to not stop its release.

Forty years after its release, it is a fascinating re-watch. Clearly the most jarring element -- a plot involving a then 42-year-old Allen dating a 17-year-old (Mariel Hemingway in a very believable, moving performance) -- is the most unnerving thing about this comedy, but upon re-watch while cringe-inducing at times, it's a revealing element of what can be read as one of Allen's most meta films.

Allen has always remained coy or downright defensive about questions concerning how autobiographical his films are. But the evidence is right there on the screen, especially in films where he scripts a leading role for himself. His Issac is another one of his disgruntled TV writers (Allen never seems to have gotten over the success of shows like Saturday Night Live and has nothing but contempt for the medium) and he's meaner and more arrogant than the comparatively lovable Alvy Singer in Annie Hall,

If he's not flattering himself, he's lashing out -- at his ex-wife (a stunning Meryl Streep) who's writing a tell-all about their marriage, at his self-centered best friend Yale (Michael Murphy delivering another one of his great asshole characters) and even Tracy, the aspiring actress and high school student who is inexplicably attracted to him.

It's clear that the characters in the film and Allen the writer-director feel ambiguous about this relationship. While no one outright condemns it, Allen's character spends much of the film nervously grappling with it. He insists the relationship could and should go nowhere because of their age difference. He constantly urges Tracy to move on and see other people who are more appropriate for her age and he constantly makes jokes to undermine her (including calling out her unmistakably childlike voice).

Throughout the movie Allen calls out himself too. In perhaps my favorite scene -- because it's Allen at his most self-deprecating -- the other characters (including his main love interest, Diane Keaton) read excerpts from Streep's book about Allen and eventually the camera lingers on him while the narration unloads of fuselage of on-the-nose critiques about his narcissism.



It's a powerful moment, one that I believe underscores Allen's genius as a filmmaker while in no way absolving him as an off-screen human being.

It's also the scene that, for me, elevates Manhattan above being just a gorgeous-looking trifle. This is Allen literally in the middle of his life reckoning with who he is and who he is about to become, for better or worse. And I emphasize worse, because the film's uncharacteristically romantic finale plays very differently now than when I first saw it as an adolescent.

Allen's last minute decision to try to win Tracy back without any respect for her time or feelings, is an act of a desperate, troubled man -- stuck in a kind of immature closed loop. I kept thinking of the real life Allen's infamous defense of his affair with a teenage Soon-Yi Previn, "the heart wants what it wants."

There's an inherent absorption and selfishness in this man, and in this character. He knows it's 'wrong' to love this teenager, but the hell with it, he's going to love her anyway. That might be a romantic notion in 1979 -- it isn't now.

I can still enjoy this movie, even if its flaws stick out more and its pretentiousness is on its sleeve. It's a brisk 96 minutes and it has some genuinely laugh out loud funny lines and beats (I especially love the reveal of diminutive actor Wallace Shawn as the sexual dynamo ex that Keaton has been name-checking throughout the film).

But like all of Woody Allen's work it will and should be viewed through a very different lens in light of contentious child molestation allegations against him and continued skepticism about the nature of his decades long relationship with Soon-Yi, which reads as creepily paternalistic to a lot of people.

I totally respect people who want nothing to with this man or his work  But I grew up with, always loved and am now challenging myself to reckon with it in a brave new world. It's not always going to be pretty but it will be interesting.