In observing the seventh remembrance of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, I decided to skip the jejune political speeches: both those that would argue for a renewed fight against terrorists out to destroy our freedoms and also the cloying rebuttals blaming the Bush administration for bungling the military effort in Afghanistan by focusing on Iraq.Rather than imbibe the depressing charade, I decided to spend my time in what some might consider an unpatriotic endeavor — reliving pre-9/11 New York City. I would celebrate New York by watching Woody Allen’s 1979 film, “Manhattan.”I had a double purpose in picking “Manhattan”: the first was to reacquaint myself with one of America’s most popular film directors, and the second was to visually soak in the heralded city.”Manhattan,” photographed in superb black and white, opens with a shot of the familiar skyline. As a montage of locations roll along to a George Gershwin tune, Allen nudges in as the voiceover narrator. “….Chapter One. He was as rough and romantic as the city he loved. Beneath his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat.”A succinct introduction to the film’s main interests: the man, his locale and his sexual prowess, or lack thereof.Twice-divorced, 42-year-old Isaac Davis gets involved with 17-year-old high schooler Tracy. As befits an angst-driven Jewish comedy writer, Davis ditches Tracy and then enters a relationship with Mary Wilkie, a sophisticated, neurotic Radcliffe grad with strong opinions about art and men. Meanwhile, Wilkie is in love with Yale, Davis’s best friend.Tangled relationships such as these are doomed to fail; that we know. So the lure of the film is less the predicted destination than the road taken to its expected end.It needs to be reiterated that “Manhattan” is a Woody Allen film — a description that splits well-meaning people into camps of ardent fans and militant detractors. Luckily for those of us not entrenched in Woody wars or unfazed by his obvious delight in self-flagellation, we can appreciate the cinematography of Gordon Willis, who worked with Francis Ford Coppola on the “Godfather” films and previously with Allen in “Annie Hall.”Willis’s pallete is not a film-noir’s stark black and white, but his lowly lit pictures are tinged with slight grays creating wonderful silhouettes. In particular, there is a memorable shot of Allen and Keaton in a slight fog backing the camera, sitting on a park bench, with the imposing Manhattan bridge in the background. That is as romantic as you get in the United States.Regardless of the demerits of “Manhattan,” Allen’s contribution to New York’s storied iconography is impressive. Numerous shots of the high rise buildings puncture the skyline, tempting the gods, a tribute to the city’s pride. New York is not a location on a map, but a mood. “Manhattan” delves into the lives of human beings trying to live fulfilled lives in a world overrun by consumerism. New York serves as the microcosm of the global rat race.This is a film that breathes and lives in fertile contradiction. The serene shots of the city are contrasted by its primitive energy; one moment we have a quiet art gallery, the next moment could be a crowded sidewalk.All the characters evince a sense of normalcy, when actually their existences are caskets of incontinence. Davis wants to write a great American novel, but is afflicted with writer’s block; Yale suffocates in a successful marriage even as he hankers after Wilkie.These interactions, though intriguing, are not enough to obscure Allen’s annoying aesthetic tics.Like all of Allen’s early comedies, “Manhattan” is a superlong theatrical stand-up routine replete with the uncomfortable pauses that occur during transitions.Even when intentionally funny, his comedic lines get ejected rat-tat-tat like a coughing machine gun, when they could have the trenchancy and impact of a bullet ejected from a bolt-action rifle.Moreover, Allen’s incessant name-dropping — Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Gustav Mahler, Norman Mailer, Carl Jung, etc. — masquerades his inability to write effective dialogue. Even in his latest film “Vicki Christina Barcelona,” he could not resist dropping Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative into a banal chat about sexual promiscuity.Lest these words appear as arrant vituperations, I leave the last word to Allen’s best critic: himself. One of his characters pauses long enough in a heated conversation to say, “I’m mad because I don’t like that pseudo-intellectual garbage.”So as we hit this auspicious date, it is necessary to remind ourselves that we are all New Yorkers.Most of us never had a chance to see the towers in person before they collapsed, but we have all battled the rush-hour commute, been accosted by noisy cabdrivers, lived in cramped spaces, hassled with panhandlers and walked the dog in Central Park. This, after all, is the New York of “Mr. Blandings builds a Dream House,” “The Band Wagon,” and “Sex and the City.” By the power of film, our version of New York remains an indelible fantasy — a place that never existed, yet one which will always exist.When the towers fell seven years ago, I was a college freshman thousands of miles from the shores of America, yet I remember the physical and emotional connection I felt with the victims and their families. The hijackers, by smashing their planes into those buildings, may have destroyed our national symbols and robbed Americans of our naive security and innocence. But anytime we turn off the lights and sink into our sofas to watch the “Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,”  or “Metropolitan” we defy the violent exponents of millenarian philosophy and we join others in silent solidarity.Like Allen, New York is our own town — and it always will be.—-contact Freke Ette at [email protected]