Interiors

1978 drama from Woody Allen, with a pointed lack of jokes that make it perhaps more sincere than any other film we can remember seeing. For this, it is a good film, a gripping film, and a flawed film. It did give us a good opportunity to consider Allen's art, stripped of the comedy he himself knows and notes is often used as a defence mechanism.
The family drama is hard hitting, bleak, and slightly open to parody. It also takes liberally from O'Neill's 'Long Day's Journey Into Night'. Indeed, it is remarkably like a play. Without the gags to distract, we seen even more that all of Allen's film scripts are in fact those of the theatre. This makes the dialogue seem sometimes stilted and certainly not exactly realist. This isn't necessarilly a criticism of the dialogue, which can be excellent, though it can fall into over-wordy explanations.
Allen is though a realist in that he paints very accurate characters. He examines the actual though processes, not always genius or high-fallutin', of actual people. This is where his characterisation is so effective, expecially in portraying relationships.
Allen's filming style is ocasionally pretty, largely unobtrusive, but fails to truly linger on and create images of outstanding beauty like the all time masters do (a ridiculous standard to hold anyone by). He does not quite succeed in unifying symbolically or an images; instead he has an impression of a lack of universailty.
For all this, the plot is interesting and the great portraits keep us gripped. The plot rather collapses/goes off the rails at the end, and the whole thing becomes slightly thrown together and hysterical. Yet we're not here to see pin point precision; we're here to see Allen's people (especially Keaton, again the centre of all attention and outshining the others in emotional depth and vibrancy). He shows us these, and he makes supremely watchable films.