Interiors | Kristin Griffith, Mary Beth Hurt

Interiors | Kristin Griffith, Mary Beth Hurt | A 180-degee turn away from Allen's comedies

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Interiors

	Interiors Kristin Griffith, Mary Beth Hurt MGM (Video & DVD), 2000 average customer review:based on 48 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Although indisputably a film by Woody Allen, Interiors is about as far from "a Woody Allen film" as you can get--and maybe more people could have seen what a fine film it is if they hadn't been expecting what Allen himself called "one of his earlier, funnier movies." An entirely serious, rather too self-consciously Bergmanesque drama about a divorcing elderly couple and their grown daughters, it is slow, meditative, and constructed with a brilliant, painterly eye. There is no music--a simple effect that Allen uses with extraordinary power. In fact, half the film is filled with silent faces staring out of windows, yet the mood is so engaging, hypnotic even, that you never feel the director is poking you in the ribs and saying, "somber atmosphere." Diane Keaton, released for once from the goofy ditz stereotype, shines as the "successful" daughter. Some of the dialogue is stilted, and it's hard to tell whether this is a deliberate effect or simply the way repressed upscale New Yorkers talk after too many years having their self-absorption sharpened on the therapist's couch. Fanatical, almost childish self-regard is the chief subject of Allen's comedy--it's remarkable that in this film he was able to remove the comedy but leave room for us to pity and care about these rather irritating people. --Richard Farr

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A cinematic Vermeer

Woody Allen's Interiors is a painting in motion. One can watch the film with the sound down and derive great meaning from it's imagery.
Especially fasciating is the intrusion of the great Maureen Stapleton in her earthy glory, resurrecting a family being buried under the pressures of art, beauty and intellectualism. I won't make the oft heard Bergman parallel as this movie excels on its own terms.

A 180-degee turn away from Allen's comedies

This film is moody, brooding, stark, and even the gray and tan costumes complement the colors of the beach house's interiors. The interiors of the rooms, in fact, mirror the insides of each person in this family, from the man who wants out of his marriage to the woman who wants to remain in it to the three daughters whose own relationships are suffering.
A fine cast including some Allen regulars like Diane Keaton, as well as a young Sam Waterston, give powerful performances here.

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Woody Allen's Masterpiece

Woody Allen puts on a straight face and successfully channels Ingmar Bergman. This is by far my favorite Woody Allen film (right up there with 'Husbands and Wives'). 'Interiors' is a stunning character study of three sisters and their mother. What is revealed about these characters is so incredibly real and painful that there is beauty in its truth. The film runs at a mere 91 minutes but is adequate enough to uncover so much. The acting is top notch. The cinemaphotography is breaththaking. Allen's directing is tight and focused. The ending is tragic but just. The last shot is indelible. I was rendered speechless. Simply put, 'Interiors' is brilliant.

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Interiors

Interiors is, I think, one of Allen's strongest films and I have watched it several times. It is less a comedy than the usual Allen, and more of a social/family drama and character study. We follow three grown up sisters (Diane Keaton, Kristin Griffith and Marybeth Hurt) and their parent's (Geraldine Page and E G Marshall) late divorce and the following crisis. The characters are mostly upper middle class (wannabe)intellectuals (writers, actors, interior designers), all of them in some sort of existential or creative crisis, and Allen portraits them very well. Allen himself is not acting in this film. If you like Annie Hall, Hannah and her sisters and Manhattan, you will probably like Interiors.
The transfer of the DVD is ok, but it would have been interesting to have some extra material (there's only the trailer). But the price is thereafter I think.

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Bleak House

When "Interiors" was first released it was generally deplored by moviegoers, largely because it did not live up to their expectations of what a Woody Allen film should be: a laugh-out-loud comedy like "Annie Hall," or "Sleeper." It was as if Allen should be allowed to make only one kind of film (One might as well complain about Mozart having had the nerve to write the "Requiem" after "The Magic Flute"; or, conversely, Verdi having the effrontery to write "Falstaff" after "Othello." One wonders whether Shakespeare had the same problem: "What dost thou mean that thou art writing of a Shrewish Wench from Padua? Beshrew thy Heart! . . . We want more Titus Andronicus!").

With time and distance, one can appreciate "Interiors" for what it is, an intense drama about a family in the process of disintegration. The film is beautifully acted by an ensemble cast that includes Geraldine Page as the mother, who is so quietly self-effacing that, like a vacuum, she seems to draw the energy out of any room she enters; E.G. Marshall, as a man who has been a good father, but who must now escape the house's stifling atmosphere; the three sisters, Kristin Griffith, who has already escaped to Hollywood and a middling career as an actress; Diane Keaton, who has removed herself to Connecticut--and writer's block; and Marybeth Hurt, the Elektra of the piece, whose love for her father, hatred of her mother, and competitiveness with her writer-sister have come to dominate her life. The static dynamic of this imbalance of power is upset when the father introduces an interloper, beautifully acted by Maureen Stapleton.

Some have remarked, not without cause, that Allen has given the husbands of Keaton and Hurt (Richard Jordan and Sam Waterston respectively) the short end of the acting stick; but, I believe, that is his point, which certainly reflects the title of the film, "Interiors." The very dysfunction at the core of the family has caused the daughters to exclude themselves not only from each other but also from their respective spouses, who remain outsiders. It is only at the end that the sisters come to recognize and accept their flaws, and consequently find some resolution, as the camera outside the house looking inward at their faces--framed by the window--implies.

Woody Allen's "Interiors" will not leave you laughing, but it will certainly leave you thinking, perhaps about how quickly time passes in respect to one's family.

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