New York break: Melinda and Melinda and Manhattan

Such cinematographic nostalgia! Last night, I may as well have been standing in an advance purchase line to buy opening week-end tickets for Annie Hall or Manhattan.

Once inside, I am in for a shock: people in their twenties and thirties actually do fill moviehouses! Nice! (This is the age group that always laughs appreciatively at offbeat lines that have absolutely no appeal to younger audiences and aren’t forceful enough to stir the jaded “I’ve heard this before” set. It is also the most underrepresented age category in a Madison Westside multiplex.)

The movie? Woody Allen’s newest – Melinda and Melinda. It’s not really so new (content-wise) after all – someone remarked that Woody plagiarizes himself, and it’s true. The uncertain distinction between the comic or tragic, the certainty of death – all Woodyisms through and through.

This post isn’t a movie review though. There are plenty who have already written (not too kindly) about M & M (I would say that generally, it is regarded as merely better than his recent worst). It is a homage to viewing it in New York. To watching an audience, sitting tightly in a little basement theater, looking not unlike the characters on the screen – entangled in city life and in each other, neurotic, deliberately dressed, seemingly focused on their own personal successes. Since the movie jumps between two separate story lines, it isn’t hard to add this third one, of those at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema last night, so that I (as the non-New Yorker) am really the true outsider, the moviegoer, while they all played their parts, reacting to each additional twist along with those on the screen.

Authentic New York. If this is a mysterious (pretentious maybe?) label, wander into a moviehouse and stare at the audience. You'll see it.