Until I was 11 years old, I thought Annie Hall was a close personal friend of my father. He would talk about her constantly, quoting things she said, and telling me that I should meet her — at least that’s what I thought he meant. I eventually realized that our introduction would be through a television screen.
When my dad decided the time was right, he sat me down in front of the TV, and said, “Okay, you’re going to watch this with me? We’re renting it for $3.99.” “This is Annie Hall?” I asked, stunned. “She’s a movie??”
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Annie Hall was a staple of my childhood, a lifelong connection that I have to my father, even before I could remotely understand the film. It meant something deep and personal to my dad, like it was a memory from a moment in his own life. The movie is a part of him, an on-screen display of the way he thinks, a representation of how he looks back on his own past. Like the characters played by Woody Allen and Tony Roberts in the movie, my dad and his friend used to call each other Max, and no matter how many times he explained, I never got the reference.
After watching the movie for the first time, I immediately understood why it touched my father in the way it did. When the credits started rolling, I asked my dad how the critics could call this a rom-com. “It’s so sad,” I told him. “Yes, but so is life,” he said. “Just because something is sad does not mean it’s devoid of romance or comedy. In fact, you usually can’t have any one of those three things without the other two.”
A few months later, I watched the movie again, on my own accord, before going on a sixth grade date. I ran out of time before the scene where Alvy (Allen) gets on a plane, despite a fear of flying, to propose to Annie (Diane Keaton), despite a fear of marriage. Later that year, once the romance with my sixth grade love died away — not due to grand heartbreak, but simply because of tumultuous times in middle school — I watched the movie’s ending again.
At my young age, I still could not quite grasp the final sequence; I didn’t understand why the romantic leads could not end up together.
For years, I’ve turned on Annie Hall every October, not because it’s an imperative tradition, but because autumn demands the sort of melancholic, nostalgic reflection that the movie provides. But sometimes I can’t wait till October. When my first real high school boyfriend broke my heart — I mean really, truly broke my heart, a feeling so all-consuming that I did not know it was even possible — my parents beckoned me to the couch, put their arms around me, and turned on Annie Hall.
At the very end of the movie, when Alvy writes a play to change the ending of his own life and portray a couple that stays together, I cried uncontrollably. It was too profound for me to bear, too human; at the time, alternative endings were what I wished on every eyelash, and what I wrote into every one of my own short stories.
Annie Hall would not be Annie Hall if anyone but Diane Keaton had played her. There’s something about her voice, whether she was singing or simply saying “la-dee-da,” something about her uncomfortable laugh, something about her wonderfully comical, awkward body language, something about her trademark shirt-and-tie. No one else could have pulled that off. Keaton’s performance endures, touching even my generation, some fifty years later. All of my friends seem to love Annie Hall, even my guy friends appreciate the movie in a way I would not have expected but completely understand. And when she passed away last week, the news touched people I didn’t realize even knew who she was.
But the way I found out about Diane Keaton’s death seemed only fitting. I got a call from my dad, who was audibly upset. And I’d have expected no lesser reaction. Annie Hall was, after all, his close, personal friend.
Before you go, click here to see the cast of ‘Annie Hall’.
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