Hannah And Her Sisters (1986)

I rented this knowing very little about it, other than it was a Woody Allen movie that had been nominated for Best Picture. Knowing that it was one of Woody Allen's good movies was enough to make me want to watch it, but I had expected it to be something of a comedy. It definitely has its laugh out loud moments, but to my surprise, it is so much more than that. I am tempted to call this my favorite Woody Allen film, though it would definitely be hard to put it over Manhattan, which is damn near perfect.

What this film has that I don't see in Annie Hall or Manhattan is maturity. Those movies are a little bit more about middle-age relationships, while Hannah deals almost exclusively with marriage and family. Also, this film has one thing that no other Woody Allen film has, Max von Sydow.

Allen casts Sydow as a brooding, misanthropic artist. It's a fairly minor role, but it's one of a number of great performances that make the film excellent beyond its already wonderful script. Michael Caine really steals the movie as the alduterous husband of Hannah, played touchingly by Mia Farrow. Woody Allen also turns in a good performance as a TV writer struggling with the possibility of death.

His existential crisis plays alongside Caine's regret and infidelity, similarly to the structure of one of Allen's other great films Crimes and Misdemeanors, where Allen, a documentary director questioning his integrity as an artist, has his story compared with the much darker story of a man driven to murder. I was at a baseball game tonight thinking about the final scene of that movie, and I felt absolutely crushed (but not for too long, as the Diamondbacks were about to beat the Dodgers).

Allen's character is largely superfluous, but adds themes and tangents that the film would be missing without it. His part in the movie is almost like Woody Allen deciding to direct his own Seventh Seal, playing out his fear of death on the screen just as Bergman did in his classic film (that would make sense as to why this of all his films, was the one that he cast von Sydow).

The more I think about it, the more I consider it among the best films I've ever seen. I would definitely need to see it again before being too sure about my thoughts on it, but it is absolutely a must see for fans of Woody Allen, or just anyone looking for a good movie. And if nothing else, you'll do a double take the first time you realize that Carrie Fisher actually exists outside of Star Wars.

Det sjunde inseglet (1957)

I chose the the address of this site (and my iPod, which replaced my old iPod, which I had given the much better name of Thelonious Crunk) in reference to Max von Sydow's character in Ingmar Bergman's 1957 art-house classic, Det sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal). The story is pretty well known, a knight returning from the crusades, demoralized and wavering in his faith in God and Jesus (who von Sydow would actually go on to portray less than a decade later in The Greatest Story Ever Told) meets death on a beach and challenges him to a game of chess to give him time to search for answers and perform one final good deed.

As Bergman's most well known film, The Seventh Seal seems to carry with it the weight of all the perceptions of the Swedish auteur's prodigious output (totaling over 60 films during his career). As such, the film is often thought of as dour and depressing. What could be more depressing than a film whose theme so involves death that it was even given a starring role? However, viewing this as an exercise in anxiety and depression will be entirely fruitless.

For one, von Sydow's knight only became an important character well after the original screenplay (a play he had written called Wood Painting) had been conceived. A great deal of the film is instead focused on Jof, the actor, and his family and von Sydow's squire played by Bergman regular, Gunnar Björnstrand. These characters are given extremely funny, witty lines to contrast the painfully Scandinavian sternness portrayed by von Sydow.

Also interesting to note is the films unusually optimistic ending. Whereas many of Bergman's films end in the most depressing ways imaginable (think of what happens to Alexander at the end of Fanny och Alexander, for example), Bergman gives us a glimmer of hope. Jof's family becomes a symbol of love, an element often missing in Bergman's work.

This was my introduction to Ingmar Bergman, and in all honesty, left me somewhat uninterested. I was profoundly interested in the scenes of the knight, having recently denounced my Catholic upbringing shortly before viewing the film. But it wasn't until I recently reassessed the film, after seeing some 20 or so Bergman films, that I understood why it's so revered. Unlike some of his masterpieces from the late 60s, particularly Skammen (1968), Vargtimmen (1968) and En Passion (1969), the Seventh Seal perfectly connects the brilliant humor of some of his earlier films with the dark, philosophical questions that he would eventually become known for. Overall, I've come to love this film, though I would consider it simply as one of Bergman's first masterpieces. I feel he made much better films, but given its historical importance and its own qualities, this is a must see for any fan of film.