Lost in Translation

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed!

Lost in Translation (2003), written and directed by Sofia Coppola (she won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay), has at its center two people who feel alienated from others and maybe even themselves as they search for what they want. This sense of feeling “lost” is dramatized by placing the main characters in a foreign land where they are not able to connect to the inhabitants due to the inability to understand the native language and some customs.

Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is an actor who is in Japan to do a whiskey commercial for a nice sum of money which he can use since his show business career has stalled. Tokyo is a modern city lit up like New York, but all the electric signs are in Japanese, which reminds Bob he is the foreigner, the outsider. Bob even sees himself in an advertisement, with Japanese writing next to his face, stressing familiarity and strangeness at the same time. Bob makes a bit or a racist joke about how his greeting is “short and sweet,” and, so, very Japanese. He does stand out as the tall one in the elevator, emphasizing how he is out of place. He receives a message from his wife, Lydia, that says he forgot his son’s birthday. It indicates that he is estranged from his family, which indicates his solitary situation.

He sits on his bed listening to classical music and looks inanimate, as if entropy has taken him over. At the hotel bar two young men recognize him and talk about a car chase in one of his films. He responds minimally to them, and escapes. He does not want the superficial and awkward intrusion of fans. He’s jet-lagged and can’t sleep. The communications he receives from his wife are not about how he is missed but instead are faxes about house remodeling which shows how removed from emotion their relationship has become. Bob’s out-of-sync existence here is stressed by curtains sliding open automatically letting bright light in his room in the morning, forcing him to wake up. And, the shower head only fits at a level that does not accommodate Bob’s taller height.

Charlotte, (Scarlett Johansson) is also sleepless in Tokyo. She is the young wife of John (Giovanni Rabisi), a very busy photographer who has little time for her and basically abandons her in Tokyo. John sleeps soundly, at peace with his life. He runs out in the morning with a drive-by “I love you,” to Charlotte as he rushes out the door. Charlotte is in her underwear a great deal in her room, suggesting she isn’t ready to meet the outside, alien world.

At the shoot for the whiskey commercial, the Japanese director goes on in his native tongue about what he wants. The translator says the director said, “he wants you to turn, look into the camera.” The perplexed Bob asks, “That’s all he said?” That confusion continues throughout the scene. What we have here is a failure to communicate (which is the famous line delivered by Strother Martin in Cool Hand Luke, a story about another outsider).

Charlotte is also experiencing alienation. She goes to a Buddhist shrine that has chanting monks. She wanted to feel something, make a connection to this far-off culture. But, she retreats to her womb-like hotel room and says in a phone conversation that she couldn’t feel anything at this religious place. She tries to express her solitary pain in the phone call but the person on the other end is distracted. Charlotte cries afterwards, showing how desolate she feels. When John returns for a bit all he talks about is his experiences.

Bob watches TV in his room and with everything in Japanese, he can’t find any distraction from his being ill-at-ease in this foreign country. It is funny and upsetting when he watches an old clip of himself dubbed into Japanese.

Then comes the hysterical “Premium Fantasy” woman (Nao Asuka) scene. She is sent by one of Bob's hosts. She shows her exposed leg with thigh-high stockings, and it sounds like she wants him to “lip” them when she actually means “rip” them. It is supposed to be some strange sexual role-playing, as she falls to the floor as if not wanting to be touched and then wanting to be. Bob is confused and embarrassed by this awkward bit of miscommunication.

Bob eats breakfast alone, but Charlotte is just as solitary walking anonymously in a crowd. Bob goes to a photo shoot for stills for the whiskey promotion. He makes jokes since the direction he receives sounds strange to him. For example, he is told to act like “007,” but he comments that James Bond drinks martinis. The director asks for “more,” or does he mean Roger Moore? More (pun intended) confusion.

Bob again seeks refuge in the hotel bar where the lounge singer (Catherine Lambert) performs in an overly dramatic manner. She sings American songs in a way that is not comforting to the visitors. Bob and Charlotte exchange amused looks and gestures across the room concerning the singing. In contrast to what has happened to them so far, there is a connection between them that doesn’t even require words. She is at a table with her husband and others but feels uninvolved with their words. She sends over what looks like sake to the appreciative Bob.

There are several funny quick scenes which show the effects of feeling out of touch with the surroundings. One such slapstick bit occurs when Bob gets caught on a runaway elliptical machine which he can’t control since it only responds to Japanese commands.

John runs into a previous photo client, a flirtatious actress named Kelly (Anna Faris). The two talk and Charlotte looks like she isn’t even there, which shows how one can be left out of the loop even when one’s own language is spoken. Kelly is going under the name “Evelyn Waugh,” which, as Charlotte notes to John, is the name of a male writer. The scene shows how inaccurate language can be if ignorance is involved.

After both can’t sleep and or find anything desirable on TV, Bob (who tries to talk to the bartender who wanders off – again no communication) and Charlotte meet in the hotel bar and begin to talk. When she asks what he is doing there, he is very frank, probably aching, despite his glibness, to connect with someone. He says he is “taking a break from his wife,” and has forgotten his son’s birthday. He is getting paid two million dollars instead of doing a play, which shows how he is admitting to being an artistic sellout. He says the “whiskey works,” so he can get a laugh to soften his opening confessional remarks. She notes that his twenty-five years of marriage is “impressive,” but he deflates her admiration by saying one sleeps one third of an individual’s life, so that brings it down to “sixteen and change.” As IMDb notes, Charlotte finds her husband and later others of her age as being superficial. She is intelligent and searching for answers, as she went to the Buddhist shrine and listens to an audio book about finding one’s true self. Perhaps that is why an older man, like Bob, might have more to offer. He says that when one is young and gets married, “you can drive but there’s still the occasional accident,” which can give hope to someone younger who is having marital questions. She notes that he may be having a “mid-life crisis.” She says that her major was philosophy,” the impractical study of a questioning youth. The older, cynical Bob says, “There’s a lot of money in that racket.” Instead of being upset she jokes by saying so far it’s been “pro bono.” They are beginning to understand each other.

Charlotte decides to go with John to the bar for a meet-up with Kelly. He is reluctant because he knows she doesn’t connect with Kelly, but she wants to spend some time with her husband. The conversation is vapid, including Kelly’s urging to have a “power cleanse.” Charlotte tells a DJ there talking about hip-hop music that she doesn’t know what he is talking about, which pretty much sums up her situation. Charlotte eyes Bob at the bar, who pretends to fall over, as if channeling what she is going through. She walks over to him, and he tells her he is “trying to organize a prison break,” to basically get out of the country. He wants an accomplice, and she says she is “in.” The scene is funny, but it also reveals how they feel trapped by their respective lives.

The soundtrack has a muted, dreamy feel to it, which reflects the unreal sense of being in a faraway land. Bob and Charlotte both use the hotel pool, and those familiar with The Graduate and Ordinary People know how that water experience can symbolize drifting with no direction. Charlotte asks Bob if he wants to come out with her to see some of her friends that live in Japan. He had said that he would be spending the week in the bar, another form of being lost in a liquid environment, so her invitation may be a wish to rescue him.

On the night out they are very relaxed with each other except when Bob arrives at Charlotte’s room. She notes how loud his shirt is by again mentioning his mid-life crisis. He goes into her bathroom and takes off his shirt to turn it inside out. Charlotte looks away, a bit embarrassed by this quick show of intimacy. The party with Charlotte’s Japanese friend, nicknamed Charlie Brown (Fumihiro Hayashi), has all young people there. Despite the age difference and even though there is still the language barrier, Bob has fun because he is with a kindred soul. When Charlotte sings her song, Bob repeats the word “special” as he looks at her. When he sings, he turns to her, as if dedicating his song to her. (When Murray sings karaoke, it brings up memories of his singing on Saturday Night Live). When she goes outside the room for a smoke break, Bob joins her and again they communicate without talking as he takes a drag from her cigarette and she leans her head on his shoulder showing how comfortable they have become with each other. When they get back to the hotel Charlotte is asleep and Bob carries her to her room. He tucks her in and there is a conflicting look on his face as she closes her eyes to go to sleep, which may be part lustful and part parental.

Bob seeks an affectionate connection with his wife on the phone as he shares what happened during the evening. She sent him carpet samples earlier and he says he thinks her choice was the best, but he doesn’t care about something so mundane. He just wants to attempt to reconnect with her. She hangs up before she can hear him say, “I love you.” They are out of sync in their time zones (she is getting up to take the kids to school and it’s the middle of the night for him) and in their feelings.

More great dialogue ensues when they go to a sushi restaurant. Bob again notes the culture clash when he says his shiatsu massage replaced his muscle tightness with “unbelievable pain.” She stubbed her toe, and he looks at it, saying it appears “dead” and he can’t allow her to put it “back in the shoe.” He says either she goes to a doctor or she must leave the toe there. He calls it “black toe,” and suggests they might serve it at the restaurant, exaggerating the type of food the Japanese eat. He employs fractured English and calls it “brack toe.” (There is a lapse in political correctness in the film since he uses the difference in cultures to elicit humor. However, there are beautiful scenes involving religious, social and marriage rituals).

Bob takes Charlotte to a hospital and again there is no understanding what the information clerk says so they must wing it even when it comes to a health issue. There was a good deal of improvisation in the film, because, after all, you have Murray to work with. As he waits for Charlotte to be seen, Bob tries to imitate Japanese with a patient speaking to him in his native language. Bob’s responses are so off the mark that there are two ladies in the background getting hysterical as they listen to Bob’s fractured Japanese. One of my favorite playful lines in the film occurs after Charlotte gets an x-ray of her toe (where, of course, she has no idea what the doctor is saying). Bob is waiting for her with a huge stuffed penguin doll. She asks if it’s for her and he says, “Yeah, it can be for you,” acting as if he bought it for himself.

Despite their bonding, there are several scenes still where Bob and Charlotte are by themselves, looking for diversion from their loneliness. Bob plays golf by himself, and Charlotte looks at pictures of herself and John, which suggests that she only has memories of how nice it once was between her and her husband. It could be that she sees Bob’s failing marriage as a foreshadowing of her own marital collapse.

Charlotte calls Bob and says he can meet her and Charlie and his friends at a club. It turns out to be a strip club and there is an almost naked woman contorting her body to the sounds of a sexually explicit song. When Charlotte arrives she asks where Charlie is. Bob hysterically says he is taking “dance lessons,” as she sees Charlie ogling the woman dancer. She wants to leave and again Bob is on the same page as her even if their surroundings are not.

Both still have insomnia, and given how long this inability to sleep has been going on it indicates the depth of their alienation. They spend time in Bob’s room. He notes her sadness since he has hardly seen her smile. Charlotte demonstrates her perplexity with the Japanese language, and Bob jokes that the locals switch the r’s and the l’s for “yuks” since the natives are not amused by the foreigners. When in doubt, he goes for the laughs to make it easier to deal with unknowable stuff. She says, “Let’s never come here again because it would never be as much fun.” Her line says so much. It shows how she is enjoying his company. It also indicates that she sees them as not ending their relationship because it points to future experiences together. However, it also shows how some joy is fleeting, and can never be recaptured.

They lie in bed next to each other and have a serious conversation. She says she is “stuck,” not knowing what she wants to be. She tried writing and photography, and felt she wasn’t measuring up. She wants to know if finding yourself gets easier. He reassures her that once she matures she will be more self-assured. She appreciates his honesty about how “hard” marriage can be since his wife used to need him around and now she doesn’t. He frankly admits that having kids is scary, but eventually is very rewarding. They are emotionally intimate, and the only physical contact occurs when he touches her foot, and this act is sweet and tender.

Originally, Bob wanted to get out of the country as soon as possible and that is why he didn’t want to do a talk show in Tokyo. But he now says he will extend his stay and do the show since he doesn’t want to leave Charlotte any sooner than he must. The talk show host is very over-the-top, wearing clothes that look like he stole the material from an awning. He does a strange welcoming dance and Bob, as usual, looks like he walked through the looking glass into a strange new world.

Bob receives a call from his wife while he is in a tile tub filled with water. She says the burgundy carpet he liked is not in stock and he should pick out another color. He says she should pick it out because, “I’m completely lost.” When she implies that he is making a big deal over a carpet color he says, “That’s not what I’m talking about.” We know he’s talking about his whole life. He says he wants to eat healthier the way the Japanese do. She snidely says he could stay in Japan and eat like that all the time. When he asks about the children, she again is on the offensive, saying they are getting used to not having their father around. After they hang up Bob sinks below the water, symbolically showing his marriage is also in jeopardy of going under water.

In the bar, the lounge singer sits next to Bob, smiles at him and says “Hi.” The next scene is Bob in bed and the singer is in his room, showing that they spent the night together. Bob does not look happy about what he has done, implying it was not the answer to his feeling of loneliness. Charlotte surprises Bob at his door asking if he wants to go to a restaurant. She hears the woman singing to herself in the background, and this discovery leads to Bob and Charlotte’s first “accident,” as Bob would say, on their relationship road. At the restaurant they are both sullen. She is sarcastic when she says it makes sense that he slept with the singer since, “she is closer” in age to him (than Charlotte, is the implication). She is jealous, and says, “Maybe she liked the movies you were making in the ‘70’s, when you were still making movies.” Her comment takes a shot at how old he is and suggests that he is a has-been. He retaliates by suggesting she is showing immature narcissism when he says, “Wasn’t there anyone else there to lavish you with attention?” Charlotte’s feeling “lost” is signified by her not being able to tell the difference between the offerings on the menu. Their very brief estrangement is seen in the fact that they are now silent.

A fire alarm wakes them up and while waiting outside Bob’s comic stance as he wears his kimono brings a smile to Charlotte’s face. They again bond as they criticize having to cook their own food at the restaurant. He’s leaving the next day and she says that she will miss him. At the bar, he admits he doesn’t want to leave. She says, “So don’t. Stay here with me. We’ll start a jazz band.” They are revealing their feelings for each other more openly now. The “jazz band” reference could show how they are in rebellion against what is around them, including the mediocre music that has been playing in the bar. They exchange a slightly off the lips kiss goodnight.

Charlotte says goodbye to him in the lobby unable to show a public display of affection despite Bob’s extended longing stare at her since there are a bunch of local people present who were attached to Bob’s visit. As he is driven away, he sees Charlotte walking in the street. He stops the car, and they share an extended hug and a long kiss. He whispers to her, and she says, “Okay.” There has been debate about what he says. But that isn’t the point. It is between them, a final act of connection in a disconnected world. The last shots are from the inside of the car, and we get Bob’s perspective as he now wishes he didn’t have to leave a city he first didn’t want to visit.

The next film is The Big Lebowski.

Annie Hall

SPOILER ALERT! The plot of the movie will be discussed.

Woody Allen’s 1977 film, which won the Oscar, (beating out Star Wars), is a portrait of the artist as an alienated man. Allen exhibits this outsider predicament through the story line, but also with various cinematic techniques. In real life, Allen, and in the movie, his surrogate character, Alvy Singer, are powerless to satisfactorily interface with the world around them. So, they use art in an attempt to control their lives, and try to make a connection to others.

Right from the beginning, Alvy breaks the “fourth wall,” escaping the confines of the plot, and speaks directly to the audience in an attempt to explain his take on existence. He notes a joke about two women at a place in the Catskills saying how the food was lousy, with one of them further commenting that the portions were small. Alvy says that is how he views life – “full of loneliness and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness. And it’s all over much too quickly.” So, despite his emphasis on the negative, he admits that he doesn’t want to give it up, that there is still something worth living for. That turns out to be, mostly, romantic relationships. But, at the same time he confesses that he doesn’t have the qualities needed to connect with others, and his feelings of inadequacy cause him to quote Groucho Marx, or whoever made up the line, which says, “I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me as a member.”

The movie skips around in time, reflecting Alvy’s stream-of-consciousness. He says that he has a hyperactive imagination, so his mind jumps around a lot. This is the character’s psychological explanation for the non-linear story line. But, the non-sequential telling of events also stresses that what we are seeing is a work of art, with the artist having the god-like control over his invention that a person cannot exert over his or her life. At the conclusion of his opening speech, which is set at the end of the story about to be told, Alvy notes that he has broken up with Annie (Diane Keaton, in an Oscar-winning performance). Even though this tale is humorous, we know from the beginning that this story, despite the artist’s power to manipulate events, does not end with the principle players living happily ever after, because Allen does not want to present a film with a rosy mindset.

 Alvy says he is not a depressed individual, but this assertion is undercut by his youthful fixation on the death of the universe, since it continues to expand, and eventually will “break apart.” He has stopped doing his homework, and his mother brings the boy to the family doctor, who offers a normal way of dealing with impending doom, which is “to enjoy ourselves while we’re here.” The doctor’s name is “Flicker,” which undercuts his advice by emphasizing the lack of persistent stability in the universe. (Could the name also conjure up the term for a movie, a “flick,” implying that a film only can deliver momentary enlightenment or happiness?)

This feeling of a lack of security in a turbulent world is symbolized by Alvy growing up in a house built under a Coney Island roller-coaster, the vibrations of which cause his home to shake. Add to the housing situation, we have the additional image of his father running the bumper car ride. Thus, instead of going with the flow of human traffic, Alvy continually collides with the outside world.

Alvy’s outsider personality makes him always at odds with others. As a youth, he saw his fellow students and teachers as inferior. He says that the teachers didn’t fall into the category of those who can’t do, teach, because they “couldn’t do anything.” By placing Alvy as an adult conversing with school age children, Allen depicts the distance Alvy felt between himself and his classmates. For instance, Alvy had sexual impulses toward the girls long before puberty. But, Allen’s technique also shows how we remember the friends we have lost touch with, frozen in memory snapshots of the past, as we wonder what has become of them.

 Alvy has conflicting forces working on him. On the one hand, he wants to be accepted and admired by others, but on the other side, he can’t get over his feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt, which make it difficult to accept recognition of his talent, and make him discredit those who either express praise or seek a romantic relationship with him. When fans of his comedy stand-up routines approach him, he distances himself by pretending not to be himself, and then by degrading their attention, calling them mafia types (cast members from The Godfather) or lower-class workers. But, he also tries to dismiss those who appear higher in the intellectual social strata than himself. His second wife, Robin (Janet Margolin), associates with New York intelligentsia at a party, and instead of trying to connect with them, Alvy goes off to the bedroom, now identifying with the blue-collar mentality, by watching the New York Nicks play. When Robin enters the room, Alvy, out of sync with the occasion, wants to have sex with her, saying the mind can “lie” but the body always tells the “truth.” Here, he values non-thinking physical urges over what he considers pseudo-intellectualism. In short, he always makes himself the odd man out. (He may find himself at odds with either the educated or working-class groups in the city, but he also shuns the suburbs, with its unsettling insect sounds and moths caught behind window screens).

The famous scene which demonstrates not only the suspicion of others promoting their mental abilities, but also the contrast of art with real life is the one where Alvy and Annie wait in a movie theater line. Behind them is a man who negatively critiques the works of film directors Allen admires. The audience connects with Alvy having to endure a know-it-all loudmouth. The man then mentions the work of Marshall McLuhan in the field of communication theory. Alvy then steps out of the verisimilitude of the story and again addresses the audience along with the man in line. Alvy then mixes true reality into the film by bringing the real McLuhan into the movie frame, who then tells the man in line that he knows nothing of his work. Alvy then says to the camera “Boy, if life were only like this.” Alvy literally does not fit in within the “realistic” parameters of the story, so Allen, the artist, allows his stand-in, Alvy, to escape the “plot” of his life, which he finds hostile, and exist in an unscripted world which accommodates his point of view.

Because Alvy feels that society excludes him, he sees himself as a victim, Thus, he finds comfort in embracing anti-establishment conspiracy theories. Because his Jewish background provides historical proof of persecution, he suspects anti-Semitic references in the speech patterns of others; he hears “Jew,” when someone says, “D’you.” He fears that the rest of the country considers him and his fellow New Yorkers to be “left-wing, Communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers.” He interrupts lovemaking with his first wife, Allison (Carol Kane), because he can’t get the conspiracy argument against the lone gunman theory concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy out of his head. However, Allison, rightly says he is just using this preoccupation to avoid being intimate with her. His outsider mindset won’t allow him to believe that she would want him.

 Alvy is even alienated from his own profession. He can’t stand the guy who wants to hire him to write jokes for his pathetic act. So, he decides to deliver his comic material himself by doing stand-up (the way Allen did in real life). When he goes out to Los Angeles to meet his transplanted New York actor friend, Rob (Tony Roberts), he is appalled by his use of a laugh track on his TV show, which points to the diminishment of art when success is achieved too easily. Alvey says Rob should be doing plays in New York’s Central Park. Rob says he acted in the park, and was mugged, thus justifying his Hollywood lifestyle. (The fact that Alvy can’t even connect with a male friend is implied by the fact that Rob keeps calling Alvy “Max,” instead of his real name). When Annie says how clean it is in LA, Alvy comments, “That’s because they don’t throw their garbage away; they turn it into television shows.” He also rants against the narcissistic award-giving of Hollywood, saying that they would give a trophy for “Greatest Fascist Dictator: Adolph Hitler.” (Of course, Allen was not present at the Academy Awards ceremony to accept his writing and directing Oscars for this film). For Alvy, Hollywood presents a clash of conflicting architectural designs, and is a place of inauthenticity, where Christmas music plays amid rows of palm trees while one constantly drives, and never walks, anywhere. It is a place where restaurants offer unappetizing meals consisting of sprouts and “mashed yeast,” and the town literally renders him nauseous. Allen satirizes the city’s fleeting interest in a succession of fads by having Jeff Goldblum (in an early movie appearance), calling someone to ask for help because, “I forgot my mantra.” Alvy, never feeling comfortable anywhere, can’t handle the “mellow,” or, content ways of LA dwellers, which, for him, leads to a mentally vegetative state. He says, “if I get too mellow, I ripen, and then rot.”

So why does the loner Alvy, at least to a greater degree than with others, establish a bond with Annie? Because when they first meet, she looks more like an outsider than he does. She is awkward in her speech as she tries to show her interest in Alvy. Visually, she doesn’t conform, her male clothing colliding with her feminine identity. She drives badly (as we see later, so does Alvy). And, like him, she is uncomfortable when someone praises her. For example, when he compliments her on her singing, she looks like she wants to run away. Allen cinematically emphasizes their mutual inability to express themselves with another person by putting subtitles on the screen which show the hidden meanings behind their spoken words. Another noteworthy episode shows the two trying to cook lobsters. Here, they are awkward. but they are accepting of each other’s ineptness, and can laugh and enjoy their alienation together. They sit and have fun watching people walking past them, making up their backstories. (Observing one man, Alvy says he wins the Truman Capote look-alike contest. It is, in fact, Capote, as Allen again intermixes realistic storytelling with artistic manipulation). Alvy feels comfortable exposing Annie to his bleak, off-putting view on life, taking her to a bookstore, and buying her works dealing with death. He tells her that he sees life is divided, “between the horrible and the miserable.” The horrible consist of “terminal cases,” and “blind” and “crippled” people. And, “the miserable is everyone else.” So, he tells Annie, “you should be happy you’re miserable,” because that’s the luckiest one can be in the world according to Alvy.

But, Alvy’s inability to feel at home even with Annie surfaces. When she wants to move in with him, he resists, saying that her apartment allows them the independence that is missing in cohabitation. But, conversely, he wants to keep her on a leash for himself, not wanting to go to parties with her, which might cause Annie to connect with inhabitants of the rest of the world, who he would rather avoid. He says to her, “What do we need other people for?” He may feel closer to her than anyone else, but he keeps trying to change her, urging her to take adult education courses. He sees this advice as helping Annie grow intellectually, but she feels that Alvy is judging her for not being smart enough for him. When she does take courses to improve herself, he acts hostile as she becomes more assertive and independent. He now reverts to his anti-intellectual stance, calling the courses “mental masturbation.” Annie responds by saying masturbation is a subject Alvy excels at. Alvy then delivers the line, “Hey, don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone I love.” Very funny, yes, but also revealing. It stresses his separateness, his inability to share true emotional intimacy with another. He never really says that he loves Annie. He seems to only get satisfaction from himself. Even in Alvy’s animated fantasy, he can’t achieve bliss with another, as Annie becomes the wicked Queen, and they have the same arguments they have in his real life.

Allen visually reveals their estrangement by having Annie project an out-of-body ghostly version of herself as she and Alvy start to make love. It illustrates how emotionally detached from him she has become. When the two are in respective therapy sessions, Allen uses the split screen technique to show the opposing takes on their sexual activity: she sees three times a week as having sex “constantly,” while he sees it as occurring “hardly ever.” She tells Alvy that she discussed a dream she had with her therapist which involved Frank Sinatra smothering her. Her therapist said that she subconsciously substituted Sinatra for Alvy, whose last name is Singer. Thus, the implication is that Alvy is trying to stop Annie from evolving.

 After a previous noisy, distracting singing engagement, Annie performs to an attentive audience. After her set, a music producer, Tony Lacey (Paul Simon) approaches her and offers her a chance to record in California. Of course, Alvy is against it, but they do go to LA. She enjoys Lacey’s company and his entourage. She and Alvy decide that they have grown too far apart, and separate when they return to New York. Alvy delivers one of my favorite lines from the film. He says that a relationship is like a shark: it has to keep moving to exist, and “what we got on our hands, is a dead shark.” When they divide up their things, Annie gives Allen his political buttons, which are against every president, except Kennedy, in his lifetime. Humorous, but also a telling reminder of how long Alvy has felt estranged from mainstream American life.

He finds out that she is living with Lacey (Allen said he wanted Alvy to lose the girl to someone shorter than himself to emphasize Alvy’s lack of self-esteem. This is a man who already said he was one of the few men who suffers from “penis envy”). He goes out of his comfort zone, and flies to LA. He even drives to meet Annie at a restaurant, and his lack of automobile skills is evident in his halting maneuvers. When they meet, he now asks her to marry him, hoping to get her back. Annie sums him up pretty well when she says, “You’re incapable of enjoying life. You know that? I mean you’re like New York City … You’re like this island unto yourself.” (One of the possible titles for the film was “Anhedonia,” which is the inability to get pleasure.) Alvy seemed to consider New York as the black sheep in the American family, so it is fitting that he identifies with it so much. As he attempts to drive away, he keeps whacking into things. We get images of his father’s bumper car ride. So, from the beginning of Alvy’s life to now, he keeps slamming up against the world around him.

Alvy writes a play based on his relationship with Annie, but he has her coming back to him at the end. Alvy tells the audience, it was his first play, and one wants things to come out perfect in art. But, Allen, who has shown us how as a filmmaker he can bend his art to his wishes, is experienced enough to know that this story would seem inauthentic if it had the typical movie happy ending. He does say that he met Annie again later on. She had moved back to New York, and dragged her new boyfriend to a viewing of the Sorrow and the Pity, the anti-Nazi documentary, a fact that makes Alvy feel he had a positive influence on Annie. They have a good reunion, as we view shots of their past experiences together, with Annie singing “Seems Like Old Times.”

The movie ends as it began, with Alvy addressing the audience. After his meeting with Annie, he tells a joke about a man whose brother is crazy because he thinks he’s a chicken. He doesn’t commit him because, he says, he needs the eggs. That is how Alvy now thinks of relationships, because, “they’re totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd … but, uh, I guess we keep goin’ through it because, uh, most of us, … need the eggs.” So, even though he is a confirmed outsider with self-esteem problems, and sabotages all his social involvements, he feels compelled to keep trying to connect with others, for those few “good times.”

The next film is The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Manchester by the Sea

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

The film Manchester by the Sea (2016) shows the alienation of character Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) in his aloofness, anger, inability to communicate, lack of direction, and lack of feeling at home anywhere.

We know that Lee was a happy person at one time by the opening flashback scene where he is on a boat, joking with his nephew. But, at the current time he is a solitary figure living in Boston, working as a handyman/janitor at a rundown apartment building. He is almost uncommunicative with the tenants, as one drones on with anecdotes or another rudely expresses bitter complaints. He overhears how one female tenant is attracted to him while speaking about Lee as he services her apartment, but he makes no effort to pursue a relationship. He acts the same way with another woman at a bar, who spills a drink on him as an icebreaker. Actually, although Lee is the focus of the story, these other characters are not direct in their communicative skills, possibly showing how Lee’s condition is indicative of a general modern-day problem of connecting with others. At first it appears Lee is detached, but the looks on his face show that he harbors hostility, and unleashes a few expletives at one of the female residents. Indeed, it seems that the only way he interacts with people is with avoidance or anger, as we observe him getting into a bar fight for the simple reason that two men are looking at him. We see him alone in his room, watching sports on TV, and then falling asleep. Thus, the film depicts him as an unhappy, angry loner, who seems to be unable to be social.

His work fixing up other peoples’ places is ironic, because we learn that he has been unable to put his own broken life back together. We later learn that his negligence in not screening in a fireplace caused a blaze which destroyed his home, resulting in the death of his children. This tragedy took place in Manchester, where he once lived. When he finds out that his beloved brother, Joe (Kyle Chandler) is succumbing to his congestive heart failure, he is forced to confront his traumatic past by returning to Manchester. As he drives there, we see his anger when he encounters traffic congestion during his trip. Thus, his guilt may be manifesting itself in displaced aggression towards others.

When he arrives, he discovers that he did not make it in time to see his brother alive, which, again, he probably sees as a failure on his part. He appears unemotional, though, trying to suppress his guilt. Ironically, he only seems to show affection not to living people, but only to the lifeless corpse of his brother, which he holds and kisses. This scene emphasizes his inability to engage other human beings. When he finds out that his brother appointed him as the guardian of Joe’s son, Patrick (Lucas Hedges), Lee can’t conceive of himself being capable of fulfilling the role. Despite their earlier affection for each other before the accident, the two are now estranged because of Lee’s many years of absence, and there is a disconnect in their relationship. Patrick wants to repair his father’s tour boat, and Lee just wants to close down the business, not wanting any ties to Manchester, which is a painful reminder of his tragic past. When they are parked outside of the morgue, and Lee asks his nephew if he wants to go in to see his dad, Patrick says “let’s go.” The youth meant he wanted to see his father, but Lee, wanting to escape, takes the boy’s statement to mean he wants to leave, and starts to drive off. Here we have a small but telling scene of how Lee is unable to communicate with his nephew, and, thus, how he fails to connect with him.

We do get a glimmer of Lee’s parental feelings when he seems to question Patrick’s sexual involvement with one girl while he is pursuing another, but it is just a glimpse. When his nephew asks if it’s okay for his current girlfriend to stay over, Lee, not understanding the role of fatherly authority thrust upon him, wants to know why Patrick is asking him. He then awkwardly thinks he must show some mature responsibility, so he mentions about using a condom, after which Patrick reassures him that his father already had the sex talk with his son, invalidating Patrick’s fatherly attempt. In a flashback, we are reminded that Lee, at least at one point, was a loving parent, and husband to his wife, Randi (Michelle Williams). In contrast, Patrick’s family life was far from ideal, since his mother, Elise (Gretchen Mol), was an alcoholic. Patrick tries to connect with his supposedly recovering mother after the death of his father. However, she is still shaky despite trying to compensate by getting involved in a regimented religious relationship with Jeffrey (Mathew Broderick), and can’t even get though an afternoon reunion with her son. That Patrick shares a propensity to displaced anger with his uncle can be seen in the fact that the young man is hostile playing hockey, yelling profanities at a fellow teammate, which also echoes his uncle’s inability to communicate.

 We have a flashback of Lee showing his bare apartment, which he has moved into in Boston, to Joe and Patrick after the loss of his children. The sparseness of the living space echoes Lee’s not feeling that his new place is a home to him, and stresses his rootless existence. In the present, we see more of the lack of connecting with others. There is a painfully awkward scene where Lee and the mother of a friend of Patrick’s, who is attracted to Lee, are unable to communicate. This episode shows that Lee’s helplessness in social relationships spreads beyond himself. We also have a symbolic scene illustrating Lee’s lack of personal direction, and how he now feels lost in his old hometown, when he and his nephew wander around in the cold because Lee can’t remember where he parked his car.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking scene of the movie is the one where Lee encounters his ex-wife, Randi, outside, appropriately, in the cold. The lighting shows one framed in darkness, the other in light, to emphasize the schism between the two. Randi basically wants to apologize for the terrible things she said, blaming Lee for the accident, and it appears she wants to say that she still loves him. Their dialogue is a series of sentence fragments, but they, ironically, can communicate their sadness and caring in their expressions and body language, and we see Lee totally vulnerable and emotional here.

At first Lee wants to place Patrick with Joe’s boating partner, and even is encouraging about his mother, Elise, which angers Patrick, who accuses his uncle of trying to get rid of him. Lee looks for a job in Manchester, but encounters hostility from those who seem to blame him for running off after the accident. This fact shows how he is unable to return to his former home. Lee demonstrates that he wants to take care of Patrick, at least until the boy reaches age eighteen, by suggesting that his nephew move to Boston. But, Patrick still sees Manchester as his home, and refuses to leave. Lee begins to parent in his own way, allowing time for Patrick to be intimate with the girl he is pursuing. He sells his brother’s rifles so that the engine in Joe’s boat can be fixed, allowing the business to continue. But, after the shattering confrontation with Randi, he confesses that he can’t “beat” the trauma he experienced.

Lee does arrange for Patrick to stay in Manchester. He tells Patrick that he got a job as a handyman in Boston in a smaller complex, so he won’t be as stressed out. Lee assures Patrick that he doesn't have to come to Boston because George (C. J. Wilson), Joe’s partner, is going to adopt him, and handle the finances. They can rent out Joe's home until Patrick turns eighteen and then he can move back in. When he’s twenty-one, he can do what he wants with the house. 

The change in the weather from the coldness of winter to the warmth of spring at the end of the story reflects the change in the relationship between uncle and nephew. They were not able to bury Joe previously because the ground was too cold. Now, the earth can accept him, and Lee and Patrick can try to bury the hurt of his passing. It also reflects the thaw in their relationship. Lee has rented a room in Boston with space for his nephew to visit, if he so desires. The film thus offers the possibility of hope for Lee to have a place he can call home and a bond with a member of his family. The movie ends as it began, with Lee and Patrick on a boat, suggesting a happier time in the past, and the chance for it in the future.

The next film is Annie Hall.