I can understand why we played this movie last in the Woody Allen trio–because it ends happily for Woody Allen’s character at least. And isn’t that the esential definition of comedy?
We talked in class about how Woody Allen’s character is always setting himself up for tragedy–some people linked this to Freud’s death drive, which I think is a pretty intriguing and accurate way to describe his characters’ actions throughout the films. He always seems to be going for the most lethal possible outcome. He definitely does this in Manhattan, where he doesn’t realize until the end that he’s made a “terrible mistake” in letting Tracy go. While Annie Hall doesn’t seem to leave him in as much despair, we can tell as an audience that his relationship with Annie was one of the most formative of his life. He even tries to do this in Hannah and Her Sisters, when he goes on a date with Holly that he perceives as utterly miserable.
But in the end, Mickey finally seems to overcome this nearly-fatal flaw of all of Woody Allen’s characters and seemingly choose someone he can “marry”–and after all, isn’t a happy marriage the ultimate goal of all of the films we’ve seen thus far? If a happy marriage means “success,” then Mickey is finally successful in this film, where Isaac and Alvy were not.
