If my greatest films of all time list had gone up to twenty, I would have added Annie Hall. Rev Robert E. Lauder is a Catholic priest and professor of philosophy in the States who is an ardent admirer of Woody Allen. He’s also written a book I haven’t come across that looks very interesting: Magnetized by God: Religious Encounters through Film, Theater, Literature, and Paintings (Resurrection Press).
Last month Fr Lauder got the chance to interview Woody Allen. He spent much of the time fishing for religious ideas, hoping that Allen would give at least a hint of reaching for the transcendent through his cinematic artistry. No such luck. Allen’s take on life is remorselessly bleak, despite the humour:
RL: When Ingmar Bergman died, you said even if you made a film as great as one of his, what would it matter? It doesn’t gain you salvation. So you had to ask yourself why do you continue to make films. Could you just say something about what you meant by “salvation”?
WA: Well, you know, you want some kind of relief from the agony and terror of human existence. Human existence is a brutal experience to me…it’s a brutal, meaningless experience—an agonizing, meaningless experience with some oases, delight, some charm and peace, but these are just small oases. Overall, it is a brutal, brutal, terrible experience, and so it’s what can you do to alleviate the agony of the human condition, the human predicament? That is what interests me the most. I continue to make the films because the problem obsesses me all the time and it’s consistently on my mind and I’m consistently trying to alleviate the problem, and I think by making films as frequently as I do I get a chance to vent the problems. There is some relief. I have said this before in a facetious way, but it is not so facetious: I am a whiner. I do get a certain amount of solace from whining.
RL: Are you saying the humor in your films is a relief for you? Or are you sort of saying to the audience, “Here is an oasis, a couple of laughs”?
WA: I think what I’m saying is that I’m really impotent against the overwhelming bleakness of the universe and that the only thing I can do is my little gift and do it the best I can, and that is about the best I can do, which is cold comfort.
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 so depressing it makes me want to go and watch Annie Hall and a whole clutch of Woody Allen classics to cheer myself up.
It is said by several authors that only 50% of people have any religious faith. This extract emphasises this for me.
I am a Nurse and there is a growing emphasis in our profession of emphasis upon spirituality rather than religion. Stress is placed upon those things which give purpose and meaning in people’s lives and these can be any range of things from appreciation of good art/food/wine etc to political activities, appreciation of nature – the list is endless.
Whilst I appreciate that these things can and do give people meaning and purpose, it is almost as though there is an acceptance of the decline of religious faith and seeking to replace the transcendent and Spiritual with a material form of ‘spirituality’.
I think he’s being a bit bleaker than his films suggest… check out Crimes and Misdemeanours which of all his films is the one in which he considers this question most explicitly. And of course in Manhattan, he does refer to Mariel Hemingway as “God’s answer to Job”
Yes, perhaps he enjoyed playing the atheist to the priest who was interviewing him. But it is still pretty bleak when you read it in black and white!!
Here’s the clip from Hannah and Her Sisters where atheism drives him to suicide. Sure Groucho steers him away from misery and suicide. But it’s belief in the possibility of God that makes the real difference (just follow the lines carefully). I think Woody is playing up to the priest.
Thanks Edmond
By the way, Fr Stephen, i got the “The Dead” (no.10) right in your film quiz … Instead of saying “The Dead”, i quoted the last lines of Joyce’s book where snow falls all over Ireland (in case you were wondering what the passage was .. maybe not..).
I didn’t realise!
I have always enjoyed Woody Allen films, and have also appreciated/understood the underlying pessimism. But since his relationship with Soon Yi came to light (a naive girl and an authority/parental figure) I have lost respect for him.
The professional and the personal may be separate in the news, but in the end we are what we are.
In response to Edmond, I recognized your Joyce quote. . . (although I didn’t get films any right. . . don’t get out much).
That is, any films right. . . mistyping or editing ??? oops.