Does anyone else dislike Holly??

Yeah, you're right, I'll change that.











"Reality is the new fiction they say, true is truer these days, truth is man-made"

Hannah is really the matriarch of the family, since the mother is a sad alcoholic. As such, her own needs tend to come last. It's quite poignant when she tells Elliot she has needs, and he says something to the effect that she never lets anyone see them so how can anyone know or tend to them?

Hannah is the more grounded of the three; but all three sisters bear scars of Adult Children of Alcoholics. Hannah, as the oldest, is the one who always plays the responsible grownup. She says at the first Thanksgiving dinner that now she has finished acting in a production of A Doll's House she has "gotten that out of my system," and can go back to making a good home and being a Mom, a banker, a confidante, a mediator when the parents fight, and so on. But the way she says it makes you wonder if she wishes she hadn't given up her acting career.

But I digress... Holly. The most interesting role in a movie is not always the most likeable. Dianne Wiest could have played Holly for sympathy, but instead she plays up Holly's frenetic, unsavory qualities. Her performance is magnificent. A bundle of raw nerves, her ambitions fueled by cocaine, her racing thoughts tamed with Seconal, Holly is jealous, hypersensitive and selfish. Yes, she's two-faced, a fair-weather friend, deeply envious of Hannah's stability and resentful of Lee's unobtrusive beauty and seeming calm. At the bottom of the pile is a woeful lack of self-esteem, handed out in abundance to ACOAs.

The question of self-worth is Lee's biggest problem, too. But in many ways, some good, some mixed, some bad; she tries to overcome her uncertainties about her identity. Lee does go to AA, which is a point in her favor. She also gets her teeth cleaned on a regular basis! She makes an effort to improve her mind and complete her education. But she is in a long-term relationship with a man she views more as a teacher than a romantic partner. Having an affair with her brother-in-law is hardly the best route towards emotional growth. While she puts up token resistance to Elliot's advances, there's never any question that she will wind up sleeping with him. Her decision is not at all healthy or wise, and given her fragility, she emerges from it surprisingly unscathed.

In my view, and I have watched this movie dozens of times, all three sisters are well-written characters, but Hannah's is the least interesting. None of the three is the kind of woman I would court as a close friend. Considering the mess that both Holly and Lee have made of things, I have to say the ending is a little pat, particularly for a Woody Allen film, the endings of which are often ambiguous.

I think that Hannah's two scenes towards the end, where she's looking at the photographs by herself, and then the scene in bed with Elliot where she feels lost in the dark, are key to her as a character. In the first, she is realizing how isolated she is from her sisters and her husband. In the second, she is reaching out and finally allowing herself to be vulnerable.

It's subtle. Most of the rest of her scenes, though, are her on the attack (buying clothes with Holly she puts her down; at lunch with both sisters she goes after Holly's new career choice) or her basking in praise from her parents.

I recently re-watched this as part of my own Woody retrospective and it's really held up well.