In "Hannah and her Sisters," Woody Allen has created a funny, poignant, and sweet film about three very different sisters. The focus is Hannah (Mia Farrow), a successful actress currently married to Elliot (Michael Caine) and divorced from Mickey (Woody Allen). She's more of a mother figure to her sisters, Holly and Lee (Dianne Wiest and Barbara Hershey) than their own mother (Farrow's real-life mother, Maureen O'Sullivan) an alcoholic performer who likes to flirt with younger men, to the fury of her husband. Hannah handles her mother, puts up with Holly constantly borrowing money and then picking fights with her in that mother/daughter fashion, but she doesn't know that her sister Lee is having an affair with Elliot. And so it goes, as Thanksgivings pass and the women attempt to straighten out their lives.
This is one of Woody Allen's best films - I won't say best, because I love Match Point and Crimes and Misdemeanors more. The humorous parts of the films are provided by Wiest and Allen, and some of the lines and situations are hilarious: Holly and Mickey's disastrous date ("I had a great time. It was just like the Nurenberg trials"), Mickey's contemplation of suicide, and Mickey's fear of a brain tumor. Allen is brilliant as a man who believes he's living in a godless world but wants to believe. Though Jewish, he decides to become Catholic, bringing home religious info with his mayonnaise and Wonder Bread; when that doesn't work out, he talks to the Hari Krishna in the park. Wiest is as adorable as she is fantastic as a manic-depressive who goes from acting (including auditioning for a musical when she can't sing), catering (until her partner, played by Carrie Fisher, steals the man she thinks is her boyfriend), and finally writing.
The rest of the cast is magnificent and tackle some of the more serious moments of the movie: Michael Caine as Hannah's husband, looking for love in all the wrong places; Max von Sydow, Lee's tortured artist boyfriend; and Lloyd Nolan and Maureen O'Sullivan as the sisters' parents, in an imperfect marriage filled with love, booze, and jealousy. Hershey is lovely as a confused woman who adores her sister but looks to Caine for a way out of her relationship with a controlling boyfriend.
The film, of course, is filled with New York sights and sounds, including Bobby Short ("You don't deserve Cole Porter," Mickey screams at Holly. "You should stick with those rock musicians who look like they murdered their parents"), the opera, Central Park, etc., that give Allen's films their special atmosphere (until "Match Point," that is, which has a special atmosphere all its own).
A great film with Allen asking again about the meaning of life and, again, coming up with some good answers.
