How Do You Solve a Problem Like ‘Manhattan’?
Since the #MeToo movement, his once celebrated film “Manhattan” has emerged as the archetypal work of male-chauvinist art, a byword, for some, for everything that’s wrong with Hollywood and the patriarchy. “The grown women in ‘Manhattan’ are brittle and all too aware of death,” Ms. Dederer wrote in her essay. The piece was titled: “What Do We Do With the Art of Monstrous Men?”
.. “Manhattan” practically seems pre-engineered to provoke debate in the post-Weinstein world.
Most glaring is its portrayal of a sexual relationship between a divorced 42-year-old TV writer named Isaac (Mr. Allen) and a 17-year-old high school student named Tracy (Mariel Hemingway). No characters in the movie seem very troubled by the ethics of the affair, nor did many critics at the time.
.. Ms. Hemingway: In her 2015 memoir, she wrote that Mr. Allen developed a real-life crush on her after filming and wanted to take her to Paris. She told him she wouldn’t go after she realized they wouldn’t have separate bedrooms
.. “‘Manhattan’ was always about a middle-aged man with a high school girlfriend. Back then, ‘Manhattan’ was made by Woody the Lovable Neurotic Nebbish, and now it has been made by Allen the Monster. And it’s the same movie.”
.. For years, quoting lines from “Manhattan” or another film by Mr. Allen on a date could be a romantic litmus test, a way to find out if a potential partner also loved E. E. Cummings, Paris, 1930s jazz and the sophisticated, cultured world the films often came to represent.