In ‘Allen v. Farrow,’ looking for the last word on a notoriously unresolved story

The subject was “Manhattan.” The documentary filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, whose four-part series “Allen v. Farrow” begins airing Feb. 21 on HBO, were discussing the films of Woody Allen. Their new production revisits the events of 1992, when Allen was discovered to be in a relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, the college-age daughter of his romantic partner Mia Farrow; in the midst of that revelation and a bitter custody battle, Allen was accused of sexually assaulting the couple’s 7-year-old daughter, Dylan Farrow.

“Allen v. Farrow” is the result of cocreator and producer Amy Herdy’s 3 ½-year deep dive into the case, including an exhaustive reexamination of documents, tapes and interviews with corroborating witnesses. In addition to taking viewers inside the family’s story, the filmmakers pull back the lens to critique how incest and trauma are treated within a patriarchal criminal justice and family court system, and how power plays out in private and public spheres.

They also revisit parts of Allen’s oeuvre, using the director’s work as proof of the frequent charge that he has long harbored a disturbing fetish for portraying sexual relationships between teenage girls and older men.

Viewers can decide whether that’s entirely fair play. But Dick and Ziering clearly see disturbing links between Allen’s alleged behavior and his views of women, whether it’s the lovably ditsy title character of the rom-com “Annie Hall” or Allen’s portrayal of a 42-year-old man in love with a 17-year-old high school student in “Manhattan.”

“Obviously he’s a very skilled filmmaker, there’s no question about that,” Dick said regarding Allen. “But one of the things that struck me, especially to some degree about ‘Annie Hall,’ which made me slightly uncomfortable the way the characters are presented, but especially [about] ‘Manhattan’ [was] that celebration of an older man’s relationship with a teenager, without any kind of analysis of the power structure. I was very suspicious of that. So suspicious that I didn’t watch the film.”

Although Dick and Ziering have made films about well-known people before, “Allen v. Farrow” is on an entirely different order of fame, public notoriety and complexity. Now 85, Woody Allen declined to participate in the film, as did his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, and his son Moses Farrow, both of whom have defended Allen and accused Mia Farrow of verbally and physically abusing them, a charge Farrow’s other children vehemently deny. Allen’s voice is nevertheless present in “Allen v. Farrow,” in the form of clips from his 2020 audiobook “Apropos of Nothing,” as well as in taped phone calls with Mia Farrow. The series’ compelling and self-possessed gravitational center is Dylan, 35, who after decades of silence is now eager to share her story and push back against Allen’s contention that she either confabulated his behavior toward her or was coached by her mother. (Allen was never criminally charged and has maintained his innocence.)

Over the years, those who had an interest in the story in the 1990s have dug into their respective worldviews: Allen is a pervert and a narcissist, who at worst assaulted his young daughter and at the very least committed breathtakingly callous boundary violations within the Farrow family. Or, Allen is the victim of a scurrilous false accusation that was originally hurled within the context of a bitter breakup and is now being resurfaced by vindictive adult children. (Allen’s son Ronan Farrow, a journalist who helped break the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations story that launched the #MeToo movement in 2017, has been particularly avid in his support of Dylan and vitriol toward Allen.) Those who avoided the story have been content to relegate it either to unsavory tabloid fodder, the bizarre psychodrama of a dysfunctional family or the realm of “We’ll never know for sure.”