There's something wonderful about watching the disintegration of a marriage through the lense of sardonic prose.

Hannah and Her Sisters is one of my all-time favorite movies. If you don't watch it for the first time, end the film in tears and declare, "Oh! What a gem!" I don't know what to do with you.Mia Farrow is Hannah. She's married to Michael Caine, but he's got a crush on her sister Barbara Hershey, who's involved with the brilliant introvert Max von Sydow. Mia's other sister, Dianne Wiest is a recovering drug addict with a floundering career and love life. Mia's ex-husband is Woody Allen, and in-between visits to see their children and emergencies at his Saturday Night Live-esque television program, he worries about his health. While the subject matter of this Woody Allen film is decidedly heavy, the characters are so delightful you won't be able to contain your giggles.As often happens in Woody Allen movies, the supporting actors won Oscars, and while you might have been rooting for someone from Platoon that year, you'll have to admit Michael Caine and Dianne Wiest were totally adorable in Hannah and Her Sisters. Both are given ample "Oscar clips" in the film, and both have tearful scenes that will no doubt put a lump in your throat. Personally, I have no problem with the Academy's choices that year, but I might be a little biased. I absolutely love Michael Caine, and one of his lines, "I'm walking on air!" has become a household phrase of mine.The familiar themes of many Woody Allen films are alive and well in Hannah and Her Sisters, and if you've never seen one of his movies, this is a great one to start with. Among the laughter, there are moral dilemmas, infidelity, pondering the universe, depression, and family tensions. There's also a pretty big cast, so be on the lookout for Maureen O'Sullivan, Lloyd Nolan, Sam Waterston, Carrie Fisher, Daniel Stern, Julie Kavner, John Turturro, a very young Richard Jenkins, and an even younger Lewis Black.I can't recommend this movie highly enough. No matter what mood you're in, it'll cheer you up or maintain your high spirits. It's a true gem, and after you watch it, whether it's the first or fiftieth time, I guarantee you'll be walking on air.

Ambition is such a tricky thing. Without ambition, Allen would never have made either Annie Hall or Manhattan. He really stretched. And I just saw Manhattan again, for the first time in years, and I found it nearly pitch perfect. Everything flows. Well, it's understandable that this level of achievement would embolden Allen to go deeper into Auteurism and Personal Cinema. But scenes like the Three Sister Luncheon in this film set the bar really high. Really high. Too high. It's not like all the characters sound like little Woody Allens. That would come later. But their dialogue is such empty Upper New York chit - chat that reveals so little about inner life. I admit it is an amazing gift, the ability to reveal and expose the inner life of superficial characters. Few filmmakers have been able to do it - I'm thinking of Renoir and The Rules of the Game. But if you're gonna go there, you'd better be READY to go there! And...well, this film is fatally infected with Toxic Middlebrow - ism, and so you can't really tell whether Woody thinks their conversations are deep and revealing or pseudo - deep and pseudo - revealing. He's good, but not good enough to make a thing like that clear.There's one scene I love: the one where Woody and Diane Wiest go on a date. She takes him to a Punk show. He retorts with Bobby Short. Bobby Short at the Carlyle equaling "Good Music" or "Real Music" tells me all I need to know about why I respect and appreciate this movie, but will never love it. The way that different kinds of Art can describe the gulf that exists between people - that is truth. And that's the same gulf I feel between this Ersatz Masterpiece and the Films in my Pantheon.

Life is one giant human comedy, and Woody Allen understands, and portrays, this fact better than any living American director. I prefer him when he's trying to make a comedy comedy ("Manhattan Murder Mystery", "Sleeper"), but there's no denying just how proficient of a writer, of a director he is when it comes to studying the complex relationships between lovers, friends, family. "Annie Hall" remains immortally wise, "Manhattan" blindsidingly poignant. He hit his stride during his professional (and personal) relationship with Mia Farrow (lasting in the movies from 1982-1992), "Hannah and Her Sisters" acting as the era defining tour-de-force that broadened his horizons as a writer as mischievously observant as his idol, Ingmar Bergman.Told in three stretches over a two-year period, "Hannah and Her Sisters" begins during Thanksgiving and ends during Thanksgiving, both dinners held at Hannah (Farrow) and her husband, Elliot's (Michael Caine), impressive New York apartment. Acting as a plot device in similar spirit to the Cookie of "Cookie's Fortune" or the Alex of "The Big Chill", the interweaving stories, in some shape or form, connect to the perpetually frazzled blonde.As the film opens, Hannah, along with her sisters, are facing particularly difficult periods in their lives. Normally happily married, Hannah and Elliot's union begins to hit turbulence when Elliot suddenly finds himself obsessed with his wife's earthy sibling, Lee (Barbara), with whom he begins having an affair. The neurotic Lee, in turn, is currently living with a much older, antisocial artist (Max Von Sydow) she no longer finds physically or mentally arousing. While Lee's guilt thickens, Hannah, in the meantime, is forced to act as the emotional net for her basket case sister Holly (Dianne Wiest), an ex-cocaine addict who jumps from career to career while attempting to also make it as a Broadway actress. Her failed jabs at a normal life eventually settle, however, when she begins dating Mickey (Woody Allen), Hannah's hypochondriac ex-husband."Hannah and Her Sisters" kicks off as warm as any one of Allen's other comedies, but as its observational progression toward character study oblivion becomes more apparent, the film turns voyeuristic — it's as though we're a fly on the wall, catching glimpses of these imperfect people at their most imperfect times. Notice how the vulnerabilities of the characters never lose their prominence even when they're putting on friendly façades for strangers, how Allen draws such subtly profound characterizations that it becomes increasingly effortless to understand these people so well it's as though we've known them since they were children. Long after "Hannah and Her Sisters" closes does one begin to realize just how masterful of a writer Allen is; he can cover up his genius with his neuroses all he wants, but to make a cast of characters feel so multidimensional in the scope of a single film is an astonishingly difficult task — for Allen, it's duck soup. He's the perceptive one in the room.It's as if he's known people like these before. Hannah is the kindhearted success story whose need to nurture sometimes hinders her own personal growth; Lee is the intellectual who doesn't quite know where to focus her potential. Holly is the type that fantasizes about what her life could be like rather than trying to make much needed changes; Mickey closes himself off in a bubble of fear because he doesn't want to admit that a mundane life is something okay to live. Perfectly cast, the ensemble feels like one large extension of Allen's consciousness."Hannah and Her Sisters" is a saga of failed attempts at moviedom happiness, combining comedy and heartfelt drama with startling pathos. The characters here aren't merely characters but people, people with ticks, little confidence, doubts. How Allen so successfully pens them all I can hardly understand — just let the film do the talking instead of me.