“Two elderly women are at a Catskill Mountain resort. And one of ‘em says: ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says: ‘Yeah, I know. And such small portions.’ Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly.”

Staring into the camera, Alvy Singer, the protagonist of Annie Hall, addresses his audience with this quote, setting both a comedic and rather depressing tone for this week’s BP-winning film. Alvy reveals to the film’s viewers that his year-long romantic relationship with a woman named Annie Hall has ended and he doesn’t know what went wrong—furthermore, he doesn’t know what’s so wrong with him that all of his relationships with women flounder. The rest of the film explores not only the relationship between Alvy and Annie but also some of Alvy’s childhood experiences as well as his involvement with other women.

Employing Freudian psychoanalysis on his own past self, Alvy notes his paranoia as a Jewish child growing up during World War II. Not only do his rather overbearing parents exacerbate his fears, but his teachers squelch his budding personality (as well as his developing sexuality, in his opinion). As an adult, Alvy ends up becoming a successful comedian; but he’s a disastrous husband in the two failed marriages he has before meeting Annie; and even with Annie, he’s an awkward, self-conscious lover. He is obsessed with death and, as the opening quote shows, believes that life is basically a depressing disappointment.

Annie and Alvy: relationship success.

Alvy’s relationship with Annie, who is also self-conscious and awkward, seems to introduce the idea to the now middle-aged funny man that there may very well be something good in the world. Perhaps his previous marriages failed because he was partnered up with the wrong women. With Annie he can be himself. She gets him. But then the relationship with Annie goes south as well. Poor Alvy.

What Alvy doesn’t seem to understand about Annie is that she is a dynamic character. Shy and lacking confidence at first, Annie blossoms into an individual willing to take risks in both her personal and professional lives. She makes a bold move from Alvy’s New York to California to pursue a music career, leaving Alvy behind to wonder what Annie’s relocation means with regard to their relationship and her beliefs about life and what it can offer. Alvy, on the other hand, is static. Whether the difference in the film’s two main characters is partly because of their age disparity or their life experiences (that would be a Freudian thought…) isn’t super clear, but what is clear is that Alvy is not willing to believe in the goodness and possibilities that Annie sees in the world.

For Me Then…

It could be argued that Alvy’s upbringing does limit his ability to relate to other people (especially women) and see hope for happiness in his life. His frequent remarks about his Jewishness and his fear that those around him are anti-Semites hint at a lingering terror of ostracism and mistreatment that originated with the Holocaust that occurred during Alvy’s childhood. It’s understandable that Alvy would exhibit a preoccupation with death and a tendency toward morbid thoughts, given what European Jews endured in the 1930s and 40s.

Annie and Alvy: relationship fail.

Yet, the film is named after Annie, not Alvy, which seems to imply that there is something about Annie that differentiates her from the other women with whom Alvy has been involved. Her zest for life and her embrace of her individuality seem to (at least somewhat) rub off on Alvy, who has a much different thought at the end of the film:

“And I thought of that old joke. You know, the, this, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, ‘Doc, uh, my brother’s crazy, he thinks he’s a chicken,’ and uh, the doctor says, ‘Well why don’t you turn him in?’ And the guy says, ‘I would, but I need the eggs.’ Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships. You know, they’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd and – but uh, I guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs.”

What Alvy concludes at the end of Annie Hall is that everyone experiences the foolishness of love relationships as a fact of being part of humanity. His failure to persuade Annie to stay with him long-term doesn’t indicate a psychological failing on his part, but the opposite: despite his childhood upbringing and his adult struggles, Alvy is just as human as the next person. Life isn’t necessarily completely miserable, but just a series of ups and downs that we all must endure.