"Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986)

Fate has a fickle fickle way of working itself out and we may all not really know our own desires until we can take the journey and find them for ourselves. Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Two Sisters" takes us on this very journey as we voyage along two years in the lives of three sisters and their extremely chaotic lives.

First you have Hannah, who is happily married with children and is the key figure among all the story lines. Everyone in the film can be tracked back to her. She is quiet and reserved and has a plan for everything. Her journey through out the film is being able to allow herself to ask for help and to acknowledge that she may not always have the right answers.

Hannah's husband, Elliot, though is madly in love with her sister Lee. Lee, is very grounded and certainly the one someone would go to for advice. She feels emotions with every ounce of her being. It becomes hard for her with not really knowing if she wants to act on her own feelings for Elliot and run the risk of hurting her sister, or stay in the relationship she is currently in which has seems to have lost itself. Lee is living her own little version of the countless books she has immersed herself in.

Meanwhile, the youngest of the three sisters, Holly, is a free spirit but also have many many issues of her own including a dwindling self esteem. She changes careers so many times from actress, to cater, to writer. Her closest friend (Played by the fabulous Carrie Fisher) is the polar opposite.  She is welling to put herself out there. I kind of wonder if Holly being friends with her is Holly's way to over compensate for her own low self esteem, even though is just makes her feel worse.

Mickey is Hannah's first husband and has more worries than anyone you have probably met. He goes through his own voyage of trying to rediscover a sense of faith after he leads himself to believe that he has a brain tumor.

Woody takes these cast of characters and throw them all into the most culture stricken jungle around, New York City. A city that is known for making the most fickle of things happen. Maybe it's running into someone whom you haven't seen in years thus allowing you to rekindle a relationship. Or maybe it's allowing you to fall back in love with someone whom you "might not realize you love more than you think." Either way, this film just goes to show that things have a way of working themselves out in the end even if it's not what you expect.

This has always been my favorite of Allen's films, the only one really coming extremely close to topping it has been Midnight in Paris. Lee has also been one of my favorite Barbara Hershey characters possibly because of her groundness of being the middle child. She doesn't have the uber urge to take care of everyone like the older sibling, or try to prove herself like the youngest. She is able to find her own hook and take her own time discovering herself. I personally think I'm a mix between Hannah and Lee.