Customer Reviews

Husbands and Wives

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4 star:		(12)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have been a major Woody Allen fanatic since I was 10 years old, but only now, after my third viewing of "Husbands and Wives" did I fully comprehend the importance of this film within his oeuvre. It's home movie feel and documentary style provide subtle integrity for its frames. The acting and the characterization are superb. This may be the best cast he ever assembled with producer, and non-actor, Sydney Pollack even putting forth a remarkable performance. The audience will care about all of the players and wonder exactly what will happen in the end.

Allen denied repeatedly that "Husbands and Wives" was autobiographical but it would be impossible for it not to have been given the events of his life. Here we see him play a writer who, just like Allen, is cherished by fans for his "funnier early works." One wonders whether his affair with Soon-Yi had begun at the time of its production and what exactly his interactions with Farrow were like.

Allen was clearly working through many of his own personal dilemmas and that is exactly why the film is so authentic and believable. It will touch in some way most who see it as sometimes life really does imitate art.

Never has a movie about relationships hit so many nerves on so many levels. It takes guts to view this film with an open mind. I takes familiarity with relational boredom and heartache to understand it completely.

Woody Allen delves into the minds and dysfunctional lives of two and then four couples with the deftness of a ninja in "Husbands and Wives." Rarely have I seen such candor in depiction of the seven year itch. It is a place in time that will be familiar to many couples given the opportunity for honesty and will likely create interesting if not brutal debate in the most secure of unions.

The hand held camera used in many of the scenes are not for those prone to motion sickness. Nonetheless, it creates an intimacy and urgency that grant the film credence at its most passionate moments.

Each of the characters is someone that the viewer probably knows in situations that they would never discuss, leaving him both baffled and sympathetic.

I highly recommend the film to those viewers able to be honest enough and possibly brave enough to face their most intimate relational demons.

He's not happy with her, their friends aren't happy with each other, the friends break up, he flinging with his aerobics instructor, she, trying to indulge in an editor, while everybody self-consciously tells the viewers what they will not tell their (ex-)spouses. We see manipulation posing as truth, vulnerable facades imitating intimacy, lust mimicking passion, and discover, in the end, that perhaps the only true desire in a Woody Allen movie is to dodge happiness & to take pleasure in the misery of knowing that it probably wouldn't have worked out anyhow.

Confused yet?

I can't imagine anybody still in the "honeymoon" stage of a First Great Love appreciating this movie. For those scarred by years of relationship campaigning, much of Allen's view may ring all-too-true. I won't say how many times I saw myself, my wife, and ex-lovers plastered against the screen.

Throughout the movie, individuals and couples long for intimacy, for lasting passion, for refreshment, but end up settling for comfort, manipulation, and denial. I wanted to scream. I hoped, hopelessly, for hope--this is, after all, a Woody Allen Movie--but was left, in the end, with Gabriel (literally "God's Hero") telling viewers that love, romance, and passion can only exist as a neurotic and fleeting figment of experience.

Damned if I'm willing to settle for that. And perhaps that's the great strength of this movie. It could, after all, be a satire, not about mid-life-crisis-men seeking youth through young lovers, but showing, in the crassest relief, how barriers and little deceits ultimately lead to destruction and misery in relationships. And maybe that's where the hope lies, in learning to be honest in a way that none of Allen's characters can be, not even with themselves.

(If you'd like to discuss this review or DVD in more depths, please click the "about me" link above and drop me an email. Thanks!)

Woody Allen displays his more serious and darker take on relationships in this very mature look at marriage and mid-life crisis. The movie is painfully realistic and is presented as a docu-drama that allows the viewer to evesdrop on the characters most intimate conversations. The actors are all superb. I found Sydney Pollack's performance as a husband who uses a trial separation from his wife (Judy Davis) as a pretext to pursue an affair with a younger woman and then has a change of heart as his eyes gradually open to the absurdity of what he's done , particularly strong. His actions initiate a chain of events that results in Allen and Mia Farrow's characters questioning their own relationship which results in turmoil in their lives as well.

There are scenes that are so well written and acted that they are riveting. We watch these somehow familiar circumstances because we recognise these characters as people we know.

This is a very serious film with very few true comedic moments so if you're seeking a few yucks look elsewhere.

This is probably the best of Woody's "bitter" movies (DECONSTRUCTING HARRY, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS) wherein Allen continued to explore relationships with humor, but with far less of the optimistic, hopeful nature he shows in classics such as HANNAH AND HER SISTERS.

HUSBANDS AND WIVES is crisply written and extremely well performed. Everyone is terrific, but Judy Davis and Sydney Pollack truly shine. They are married, but he dumps her for a very young woman. Davis finds herself on the dating scene again, but even as she goes on her first date, she is dealing angrily with her estranged husband.

Mia Farrow and Allen are another disfunctional ex-couple. Throw into the mix nice, single man Liam Neeson, whom both women lust and fight over, and you've got a nice stew of relationships.

The movie is VERY funny, but is tinged with bitterness throughout. Occasionally, the movie is presented as a sort of documentary, where the main characters are answering questions directly into the camera, but this device is a bit of distraction. It's a minor thing, though.

Truly, the script is sizzling, but it is the performances that make this movie unforgettable. Judy Davis was nominated for an Oscar, but Farrow is very good as well, and it is a hoot to see Neeson in such an early role. Pollack could have been nominated as well, and Allen gives what is probably his last great performance (possibly excepting DECONSTRUCTING HARRY).

Allen fans must see this film. It's one of his most important. If you're not an Allen fan, I suggest starting with a "kinder, gentler" film such as ANNIE HALL or MANHATTAN or HANNAH... before taking on this one

When watching Woody Allen films you have to understand that his movies piece together like a beautiful mosiac. You see reaccuring themes and characters and conflicts. Allen's films are all amazing, though some of them I care for more than other's, they are all, in a sense, classic.

In "Husbands And Wives" we in get into the lives of two couples in a docu-drama type of way. You feel like you're really watching these things unfold, like you're really part of the action. Afer many years together Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis are calling it quits, splitting up. They tell Woody Allen and his wife Mia Farrow, and they go nuts. "How could this be happening?" After their breakup Allen and Farrow start examining their own marriage and see that they also strive more in life. As Allen and Farrow's relationship is slowly crumbling, Pollack meets a young vegetarian zodiactic gymnist, and after much anxiety Davis meets Liam Neeson, a middle aged man who also just went through a serious relationship. As Allen falls in love with one of his students (Lewis) and Farrow falls for Neeson. We see relationships and dreams fall apart and new ones rise up.

In the end this movie is a wonderful piece of art about marriage and how important it is, and if we truely believe we want to marry someone, we should think it out ALOT ahead of time. It is also about living a life worth living. Being alive and vivacious, and living each moment to the fullest. In the end you see that marital relationships aren't about romance and sex, it's about companionship.

In my opinion, probably one of his top 5 best ever. This movie piles it on deeply, and barely give you a chance to breathe. YES, the camera work is intentional and a brilliant complement to the mood of the film. The acting is spectactular. There are words to describe Judy Davis -- sexy, seductive, independent, savvy, and brave, come to mind-- but no single word nor any amount of words in combination are sufficient. Why Woody didn't get a directing Oscar nomination for this befuddles me. The documentary approach is always convincing and always fascinating. There are funny parts, but overall I feel that Woody really vented out a lot of frustration is this movie, Mia as well, and the audience gets to experience every bit of it. A triumph all around -- acting, writing, directing-- and for all involved. Way to go, Woody.

A married couple strolls into a Manhattan apartment and announces--to another married couple--that they've decided to split up for a trial run--just to see what it would be like to be single again...An obvious dramatic conceit? Watch and see...

This is a superb Woody Allen drama from the early 90s, and it's kind of like Alvy and Annie fifteen years later--had they made it to begin with. We all know, even before the black screen with the 1940s jazz soundtrack appears, that Allen's characters are dissatisfied, whimpering, anxiety-ridden Manhattanites who think they deserve better--in love and in life--and therein lies the genesis of each character's dissoluteness and [im] or [a] morality. That's a key question for the student of Woody Allen's films: do we have the right to think we deserve better? See what the characters have to say about it. Judy Davis turns in a marvelously comedic and dramatic performance--worthy of the Oscar! I'm not a Sydney Pollack fan--he's icky--but as Judy Davis's husband, he turns in a great performance as a dissatisfied husband who wants a little more out of life--something other than being married to a cold-in-bed, cerebral Simone-de-Beauvoir type brilliantly played by Davis. They're an explosive couple who ultimately realize the meaning of marriage--even if they can't pinpoint it exactly in every context. Mia Farrow does a good job in this film--for once she acts--maybe the realness of her real-life situation (remember the scandal? )with her adopted daughter brought out real emotions that were captured on-screen. If you're interested, read Farrow's biography ("Things Fall Away"--available from amazon.com), and she'll pinpoint for you the scenes she acted in after her knowledge of the Woody/SoonYi affair. Allen in this film is Allen--a writing professor who has a slight thing for Juliette Lewis, a New York debutante/student-of-Allen's on the eve of her 21st birthday--her name is Rain and she's named after Rilke--what do you think is the significance of that? She brings out the stormy and tempestuous side of love--but, as Lewis's character says to Allen, "Well...I'm worth it." The only disappointing casting in this film is Allen's casting of the horse-faced, lumpy and dumpy obvious-as-a-limmerick Liam Neeson who ends up with Farrow in the end. They deserve each other.

This film will certainly make you rethink marriage--heterosexual marriage anyway. But then again, maybe you got that from watching mom and dad...get this video instead. At least these characters are given witty dialogue and know the importance of opera and theatre--so if love fails, at least there's that...

I will start by saying this, to all the men and women who are in destructive relationships and they know it(!) but have been trying to fool themselves into believing that things will eventually 'work out', please see this film.
Yes its a typical Woody Allen movie, with his deeply intelligent insight into human relationships, but unlike alot of his films, I was actually angry when I finished it. This is no shortcoming of the movie let me tell you, but rather a shortcoming of people (myself included) in general. It was so hard to watch the characters in the film, Sydney Pollack, Mia Farrow, Juliette Lewis, Liam Neeson, etc...enter situations that they knew were doomed from the begininng, out of desperation and loneliness.
Obviously me feeling so strongly after the film shows that it is a subtly powerful film about human relationships and how stubborn we all are when we want something but know its not good for us. See this film please!!!!

`Husbands and Wives' is writer / director Woody Allen's last movie before his breakup with Mia Farrow, and, of course, the last in a long series of movies in which Farrow is his costar. As noted in more than one news article in 1992, when this movie was released, it is remarkably predictive of the Allen Farrow breakup and even on the issue over which they would split.

I saw this movie soon after it was released in 1992 and I have not looked forward to viewing it again in order to give a review of this DVD edition. The movie is probably not one of Allen's very best among his later comedies such as `Crimes and Misdemeanors', `Bullets over Broadway', and `Mighty Aphrodite', but it includes what may be some of his most disturbing scenes since `Interiors'. One scene in particular between costar Sydney Pollack and Lysette Anthony is about as emotionally disturbing as all the murder victim scenes from an entire season of CSI rolled into one. This scene really shows off Allen's writing talent. A physically brief scuffle between a middle-aged intellectual and his intellectually lightweight young paramour, becomes a viscerally painful image of a breakdown of relations between two people. Allen's talent is even plainer when we see the girl trapped in the situation where she must stay with the man until he deigns to take her home from a party probably in the darkest Hamptons, far from home base in Manhattan.

Allen has never been the most polished technician with his filmmaking, but he almost always has a major talent behind the camera. In this case, it is Carlo Di Palma. In spite of this, the coordination between the actors business and the camera's point of view is remarkably like a series of `Candid Camera' shots. I almost looked for a credit for the person responsible for being sure there was a lampshade obscuring part of the camera's view in all interior shots. The editing was also explicitly done in a somewhat choppy manner, giving some sense of a documentary style. It was quite clearly not done as a `Documentary' in the same style as `Zelig', but all the technical aspects of editing and cinematography were distinctly raw. Since I have seen enough Allen movies to know this must have been intentional and not due to a lack of skill, I have mixed feelings over whether this choppyness contributes anything to the experience of the story. I am quite certain that unlike the documentary feel of some parts of `Bananas', it does nothing to add any humor to the story. If anything, it heightens the feeling of awkwardness surrounding the principal characters' actions.

As usual, I find myself disagreeing with Peter Travers' blurb from his review in `Rolling Stone' where he uses the phrase `Fiercely funny' in describing the film. In fact, I did not once break out into a laugh as I watched this movie, although the fact that I was watching it alone may have had a lot to do with that fact. But, I have been known to giggle or laugh at least four or five times in the course of an average `The West Wing' episode, even those I may have seen two or three times. (And who said politics isn't funny.)

In more ways than one, this film seems to hark back to the days when Allen split his time between film making and writing short stories for `The New Yorker'. Allen's character is a professor of writing and literature at Columbia, and is credited with having several short stories published in that very same `New Yorker' magazine. Allen's character is also biographical in many other ways, not the least of which was the quip that he probably could not survive for more than 48 hours off the island of Manhattan. (I did crack a smile at this line.)

As usual, Manhattan street scenes and apartments are the primary venues for almost all the shots in the movie. There is a short detour to a middle class home in Brooklyn, but most scenes are in what are probably very expensive apartments on the Upper East Side.

This film is definitely not as interesting or as funny as, for example, `Crimes and Misdemeanors', and yet it is possibly even more powerful emotionally, in spite of the fact that the other movie had a homicide and this film only has bruised emotions. This is even less a comedy than the intentionally seriocomic `Melinda and Melinda'.

I would not recommend this movie to a non-Woody Allen fan, but for people who like and respect his work, this may be one of his most important films.