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Greatest Movies Of All Time: Annie Hall

Welcome to my new segment, greatest movies of all time. Films that I cover here are certified (by me) to have obtained high levels of excellence. Everyone should see these movies. If I cover a movie that you haven’t seen, then go see it!

So, the movie! I guess Annie Hall is what you could call a love story, but I wouldn’t. It is about relationships, but it’s about ones that don’t work, rather than ones that do. It pulls away from all the other cookie cutter romantic comedies that end with whoever you wanted to get together getting together and it’s implied that it’s happily ever after. Annie Hall takes happily ever after and turns it into miserable before, during, and after, and I absolutely loved it. The movie had a lot of messages, but one of the more prominent ones was that relationships are always a mess, so why do we bother. That really spoke to me because, well, I’m always asking the same question. Woody Allen has this one great line that goes, and I’m paraphrasing here, “There’s this joke. This guy goes to a psychiatrist and he says “Doc, my brother thinks he’s a chicken.” “Well, you should bring him in,” says the psychiatrist. “Well I would, but I really need the eggs.” And that’s how I feel about relationships. They’re totally irrational, but in the end, we all need the eggs.” And that’s how I feel about relationships, I just never had such a great way of putting it. There’s another line that’s not so major to the plot of the movie, but I picked up on it, and for me, it really put the whole thing over the top. Woody Allen says, “You know, you know how you’re always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because, uh, it’s real difficult in life.” And that really spoke to me, because in my own work of art, I’m angling for the perfect ending, the one that’s not going to ever happen for me in real life. Even when Woody Allen wasn’t saying anything profoundly connected to my own thoughts, I still identified with his character, pessimistic, sarcastic, removed, everything about him was me. There were several scenes I loved where he would sort of step out of what was going on to comment on the scene. Sometimes others join him. There’s one scene where he stops and addresses a couple on the street, asking them how they’re happy, to which the girl replies “Uh, I’m very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say,” and the guy says, “And I’m exactly the same way.” The movie had so many great lines I could fill pages with them, but I won’t, you just have to go see it for yourself.