Resplendent

Annie Hall

Crit (1977)

I generally like to watch this by myself, so that I don't have to try to inhibit my inclination to, as my best South African friend once said, weep like a bathtub overflowing. But every now and then you have to take it to the street just to see what you're made of, eh? I know my flashpoints (flash-flood points?): the spider rescue, the health food restaurant, "Seems Like Old Times" (both times). Eternal vigilance is the cost of not blubbering.

The twin killers, of course, are the runaway-lobsters scenes. If you've been lucky enough to love and be loved by someone who shares your sense of disaster and the absurd, well, you're as lucky a SOB as I am. But you probably also have as clear a sense as I do that the chances of finding a second such person are Ron Paul-for-presidentish. The two scenes with the lobsters loose on the floor articulate that truth as well as any three minutes of cinema articulate any truth, and they stab a lobster claw into my chest and palpate my heart with gleeful brutality.