Woody's Big Think

With the release of his latest film, "Small Time Crooks," the critics and audiences are celebrating Woody Allen's return to the madcap comedy of his earliest films. "Small Time Crooks" is indeed as lighthearted a comedic romp as Allen has produced in years. But the movie also reprises some of Allen's oldest themes. He teaches us that both our most noble aspirations and our desire for material goods ultimately deceive us. And as in most of his films since "Love and Death" (1975), Allen concludes that even though we continually suffer disappointment and disillusion when our dreams or loves fail--we will be infinitely happier if we share our miserable lives with other miserable people.

After his 1960s tributes to Chaplin and Keaton, Allen's films famously developed a darker edge through the 1970s and '80s, raising theological questions about the nature of God, the inexplicability of human suffering, the meaning of religion, and the failure of love. Of course, these issues were never far from Allen's mind, even in his comedy; in his book "Without Feathers," the Bible's suffering hero Job grabs God by the neck and tells God, "You have a good job; don't blow it."

Yet in the movies of his middle period, which we can define as those made between 1975 and 1990, Allen turned into one of our most notable theological filmmakers.

His Academy Award-winning "Annie Hall" (1977) introduces Allen's dominant theological concern: the mystery of human suffering and misery in a meaningless world. Early in the film--in a scene repeated in various permutations in his later movies--young Alvy Singer worries that life is meaningless. The universe is expanding, and since the universe is everything, one day there will be nothing. So, Alvy ponders, why bother? ("What is that your problem?" Alvy's mother answers. "You're in Brooklyn, Brooklyn's not expanding.")

Later, in a wonderful scene, the grown Alvy (Allen) offers to buy Annie (Diane Keaton) some books on death. When she says she'd rather have a cat book, he explains his view of life: "Life is divided into two categories--the horrible and the miserable. The horrible are the terminal cases; blind people and the crippled. The miserable is everybody else. Be happy you're miserable."

Allen's pessimism about life's meaning announces itself in numerous ways in "Manhattan" (1979), "Interiors" (1979), "Stardust Memories" (1980), and "Broadway Danny Rose" (1984). Inevitably, one character--often Woody's--is a prophet crying in the wilderness, alone in appreciating the bleakness of the world. "I see human suffering all around me," says Woody's stand-in in "Stardust Memories," Allen's response to the critical reception of "Interiors" as dark and unfunny. His agents respond, "Human suffering doesn't sell tickets."

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