Woody's world

Woody Allen has churned out a lot of schlock in recent years but he's still one of the most interesting filmmakers out there. Even if he never matches early perfect films like Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors he's earned his spot in the pantheon of great American artists. One of the things that makes his best work so compelling is the serious way he faces up to the human condition. He usually does it by way of trenchant comedy, but it's no less serious for eliciting laughter more often than tears. No existential compromise for Allen. Either there's a God who gives meaning to life with its attendant happiness and suffering or this is all a cruel joke.

Recently Allen was interviewed by Rev. Robert Lauder in the Catholic magazine Commonweal. Lauder asks astute questions and Allen is his typical self. Here's one illuminating exchange.

RL: At one point in Hannah and Her Sisters, your character, Mickey, is very disillusioned. He is thinking about becoming a Catholic and he sees Duck Soup. He seems to think, “Maybe in a world where there are the Marx Brothers and humor, maybe there is a God. Who knows.” And maybe Mickey can live with that. Am I interpreting this correctly?

WA: No. I think it should be interpreted to mean that there are these oases, and life is horrible, but it is not relentlessly black from wire to wire. You can sit down and hear a Mozart symphony, or you can watch the Marx Brothers, and this will give you a pleasant escape for a while. And that is about the best that you can do…. I feel that one can come up with all these rationalizations and seemingly astute observations, but I think I said it well at the end of Deconstructing Harry: we all know the same truth; our lives consist of how we choose to distort it, and that’s it. Everybody knows how awful the world is and what a terrible situation it is and each person distorts it in a certain way that enables him to get through. Some people distort it with religious things. Some people distort it with sports, with money, with love, with art, and they all have their own nonsense about what makes it meaningful, and all but nothing makes it meaningful. These things definitely serve a certain function, but in the end they all fail to give life meaning and everyone goes to his grave in a meaningless way.

This is the scene where Mickey goes to see Duck Soup: