I’ve enjoyed many of Woody Allen’s movies, especially the comedy.
I’ve also been amazed at the depth of understanding of the dark side of human nature in such films as “Crimes and Misdemeanors”.
But, what frustrates me about Allen is that he often asks all the right questions about the meaning of life, of moral sin and humanity’s need for some kind of salvation. He steps right to the brink of belief in God, but then always steps away.
He’s masterful at being able to bring humor to these issues, such as in “Hannah and Her Sisters”, where his character can’t decide whether or not God exists. He accurately understands that without God, there is no real meaning to purpose or morality to life. His character decides to “try out” several different religious paths from Hare Krishna’s to Christianity. This searching by his character is somewhat disingenuous because with Christianity, his character only superficially examines it and never really looks at the person and claims of Christ.
Anyway, his character becomes disillusioned with all religion and decides there is no meaning to life and is going to kill himself - he tries shooting himself, but misses.
After that he just wonders around in his disillusionment until one day he walks into a movie theater playing a Marx brothers film. He starts to laugh at their ridiculous antics and then decides, well, even if there is no purpose or meaning to life, you can still enjoy it. That’s it.
So, while Woody’s sense of humor and insight into human nature are indeed masterful, he always disappoints me when he brings real truth to the fore, but then backs away from the obvious answer to the spiritual malaise. He appears to just not want to accept that answer. Possibly it’s too simple an answer to him, or he just wants to continue in his unbelief.
Best Woody Allen moment was bringing in Howard Cosell to do the play-by-play for a military takeover in “Bananas.”
So, while Woody’s sense of humor and insight into human nature are indeed masterful, he always disappoints me when he brings real truth to the fore, but then backs away from the obvious answer to the spiritual malaise. He appears to just not want to accept that answer. Possibly it’s too simple an answer to him, or he just wants to continue in his unbelief.
You're too good a person to see what Woody is doing.
He's deliberately teaching despair, and very carefully lying to do it.
He's evil.
You nailed it. He goes to brink, but never over. He senses that conversion would kill his stories. So neither he nor his characters ever convert. It takes a whole other level of artistic genius (e.g., Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited) to see how eucatastrophe works in a story. Too bad that early on he got attached to Bergmann and European nihilism rather than Catholic story tellers.