Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Manhattan explores how the life of a middle-aged television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.
Woody Allen's Manhattan is perhaps most celebrated for Gordon Willis's breathtaking black-and-white widescreen cinematography, which turns New York City into a romantic protagonist in its own right — genuinely exceptional and iconic. The ensemble cast, including Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep, and Mariel Hemingway, delivers performances of real depth and naturalistic complexity. The plot, while characteristically Allenesque in its neurotic romantic entanglements, is somewhat familiar territory from Allen himself — charming but not his most structurally ambitious work. Novelty is solid but not transcendent; Allen had already established this confessional New York comedy-drama voice in Annie Hall. The ending, while tonally resonant and memorably bittersweet, doesn't fully resolve its moral ambiguities in a dramatically satisfying way.