I owe an apology, or at least not for the fear of unjustly drawn self-denigration call it an apology, but rather a heartfelt revision. When I first saw Joe Swanberg's Hannah Takes the Stairs and reviewed it here, I was left without a grounding, a solid core of enthusiasm, a sense that the film was memorable or pivotal in any way. My essential charge was that against not the actors who I felt at the time, just as I do now, gave perfectly-crafted performances but rather against the film's narrative ambiguity. Over the course of the last two months, my thoughts on this have somewhat changed, and although I will not render mistaken my initial assessments, I will add now that it's perhaps the narrative ambiguity of the film that allows it the charm of thematic universality.

What it is to be uncertain, unstable, unclear about where life is going? It's a lived experience not often defined, and when done, is done with silence as in, for example, Alexander Payne's About Schmidt, Michael Schorr's Schultze Gets the Blues, Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors: Blue or even Swanberg's debut feature Kissing on the Mouth. While there is a fair amount of silence permitted in Hannah's character, particularly in those moments when she's alone at the bus stop, her representation of uncertainty is one defined by words, and how do words become uncertain? By their nature, they entail definition, a clarity of intent and purpose, and so ironically, here's a character surrounded by perfectly drawn realities, these words, who cannot, for one reason or another, grasp her definition or purpose.

Now, the question remains unanswered throughout the film: Why is Hannah in particular so uncertain, so anxious, so needy to grasp onto stability?

Now, the question remains unanswered throughout the film: Why is Hannah in particular so uncertain, so anxious, so needy to grasp onto stability?

Yet, I'd counter that while the film dances in this arena, by putting on display these vices, that it pinpoints the exact nature of women's time-worn powerlessness. How historic are the modes of manipulation and self-indulgence for women in the course of time? How important to survival are these two qualities? It's Biblical, Salome dancing its truth, and is developed out of a need for continuation, and so why don't we herald these qualities? Why do we run from them as women and paint them in a negative light? Because they serve as reminders of our weakness, a weakness we as Western women chose to neglect. We herald our progress on the one hand and complain of injustice on the other, and we forget the spaces where our lives were bound in how we could manipulate the course of events to our safety, our benefit, the benefit of our families and the people we love? We toss that aside as a cruelty, our need to protect ourselves and those around us? To whom is this a cruelty? Not to ourselves. I'd like to believe we were all so benevolent, that we weren't at all times aware of our own existence and the necessity to live that comfortably, but where is the evidence of that person, a story that is more now than a myth or religious text so encumbered by politics and mistranslation that no one any longer knows its real meaning? No, Hannah should be allowed her internalizations, her utter disregard for the feelings of others. It's what makes her human: her capacity to perform, to deny others herself, to deny even herself the truth about her nature. How readily does anyone know themselves or their own intentions? Can it be given in short sentences, an essay, a novel? It's the mystery of the self that pushes, and yes, while we may curb our darker tendencies, if we walk out on them, as has happened for audience members with this film, it's a self-denial so fierce that it's more disturbing than the quiet tradegy lived on screen.

Of all the lines in Hannah Takes the Stairs, perhaps the most beautiful is the one in which Hannah, holding a prescription bottle of anti-depressants, tells Matt that she can no longer treat him with carelessness. This is her ascendence, a harkening directly to the title of the film, and serves as a realization that she is not alone in her uncertainty. With this one line and one scene, the only scene actress Greta Gerwig says was not meant to be performative, Hannah ammends all those former actions seen as anti-feminist. She here gives life to a connection, arguably crystallized in the ending bathroom shot of the two together. What about this equality is not feminist?

Though to all of this feminist banter, I had little cognizance while watching the film. I was much more concerned with the idea of clinical depression. The intimation that Hannah suffers some form of depression develops in the aforementioned scene, although it's rarely touched on otherwise in the film.

The intimation that Hannah suffers some form of depression develops in the aforementioned scene, although it's rarely touched on otherwise in the film.

It's on this level for me that the film's unsettling quality works to best effect. I willingly admit feeling a passionate disturbance whenever someone brings this film up in conversation, particularly because I empathize with Hannah's uncertainty about life, about depression, about connections with others. Sadness bears no soldiers strength nor depression contains its outreach. It's omnipresent although not always the feeling accessed. Thankfully, gratefully, we are granted grace from it, some of us more often than others. But, depression itself is a bond that ties us all, fear too, uncertainty too, and in reference, we are often strangers to ourselves in these spaces of doubt. That's terrifying. Swanberg asks his audience to watch an honest quality of life play out that is terrifying. Who would want to see this film? We live with this. We avoid this. We try to forget. We drink it away. We sleep it away. We sex it away. Why would we want to see that: pay money to see it when we pay money to deny it?

Why would we want to see that: pay money to see it when we pay money to deny it?

For two months, that's the question I've asked. The only answer that I can offer is this, almost a cliche: Truth, no matter its form, is always better than ignorance. Swanberg has gotten to the heart of life as we chose not to see it: the dirty dishes, the bare walls, our emotional stumbles and falls. Like Larry Clark's Kids, Hannah Takes the Stairs hits the heart with such bitterness, such oddly found beauty that to ignore it is more simple than to embrace it.

It's a film that came out in a flurry of rave reviews that refused to see it for what it was. It became a film to define a movement, and not just a film to explore a concept. In this way, it was unjustly left open to a latter storm of dissent and of hesitation. To date, much of the varying critique has certainly been carefully crafted and articulate, yet how knows even now what this film is about? I still don't.

All I can offer is this revision, this statement that Hannah Takes the Stairs more than deserves attention. It deserves study, and not only that of the film; it implores study of the self, and on that journey, I, like Hannah, like us all, am alone.

Recently acquired by IFC First Take, Hannah Takes the Stairs opens August 22. For more information visit www.hannahtakesthestairs.com.

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