Annie Hall

Annie Hall was released 40 years ago today, on April 20, 1977.

A friend of mine once said he found the movie so sad it's difficult to watch. And I can understand that — it has an understated but heart-breaking pathos. But it's also probably brought more joy to more people than any other Woody Allen movie.

Woody Allen has said he doesn't think this is one of his outstanding movies. And it's not my favorite movie of his either. But when he dies, it'll be the first movie mentioned in every obituary. It was nominated for all five Academy Awards (best picture, director, actor, actress, and screenplay), and won all of them except best actor. It was also the only time Woody Allen has won best director out of over 40 movies.

There's so much to say about this movie's innovative techniques (subtitles of the characters' thoughts, split screens to show how the two main characters live in different worlds, animation, etc.); witty and insightful dialogue; affecting performances by Diane Keaton and Woody Allen; nice minor roles for Christopher Walken, Shelley Duvall, Carol Kane, and Paul Simon; and one great line by a young Jeff Goldblum.

But for now I'll just say that I lurve this movie, I luff it, it's transplendent, it's too wonderful for words.

The trailer:




The first meeting:




The Christopher Walken scene:




The subtitle scene (the "15 years" line refers to how long Woody Allen's character has been in therapy):




Diane Keaton accepting her Oscar:

The problem with talking about cultural appropriation

Even if what gets called "cultural appropriation" is often bad, calling it "cultural appropriation" doesn't explain what's bad about it. On the contrary, labeling something "cultural appropriation" distracts from any other criticism that might have been made of that thing, because once the attention-getting phrase "cultural appropriation" is invoked, all the attention turns to debating whether cultural appropriation is inherently bad. And the idea that it's inherently bad is pretty easily refuted, so the object of criticism gets off easy. Meanwhile, the kinds of people who are drawn to the "cultural appropriation" critique have spent their time and energy on what will ultimately be a losing argument (because the consequences of consistently rejecting cultural appropriation would never be accepted). They could've spent that time and energy putting forward a more powerful critique, but they didn't, and now that time and energy — finite resources — are lost.