7. Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen, 1989) [LE]

I'm fond of saying that Annie Hall is Woody Allen's "perfect" movie, meaning all the movies that came before it are funny but too lightweight, and all the movies that came after it are interesting but too self-consciously "arty." I'll give him Crimes and Misdemeanors, however. Here he manages to ape some of the pet themes of his favorite European directors (Bergman, Fellini) without sacrificing the qualities that make him uniquely, unmistakeably Woody. If anything, his "funny" persona helps make it easier for the poison to go down, because this movie gets heavy. And by the time it gets heavy you're so caught up in the "funny" that you barely even notice.

The film interweaves two stories with opposite trajectories. In one, an ophthamologist named Judah (Martin Landau) decides to deal with a messy affair by bumping off his mistress. He is continually unable to repress flashbacks of his deceased rabbi father admonishing him as a child that "the eyes of God are upon you"; Judah attempts to put his father's theology to the test. In the other story, a failed documentary filmmaker named Cliff (Woody) attempts to woo PBS producer Halley (Mia Farrow) while administering his pithy Allenisms onto the obnoxious Lester (Alan Alda), who, to Cliff's surprise, becomes his romantic competition. To make a long story short, one character ends up feeling good and the other character ends up feeling bad.

But what does it mean to feel "good" and feel "bad," anyway? Here's where the film begins to hit you with the big questions, or mainly the big question, the question, perhaps the great riddle of human existence: why do bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people? How can some people get away with horrible things and feel great, while other people strive to be good their whole lives and get screwed? Why do we live in a universe with no moral logic?

At first, I thought Woody's answer in this film was "I know, it sucks." But when I watched the film with a friend, and when we argued about it after it was over, he felt that Woody's answer was less pessimistic: that even though sometimes "bad" things seem to happen to "good" people, and vice versa, there is still a moral logic to the universe.

I came to agree with my friend. Although Woody doesn't say so explicitly, I believe the lesson of Crimes and Misdemeanors is that even though while some people think they are "getting away" with immoral behavior, in truth they're really getting away with nothing, because the point of life is not to preserve your social standing, or your self image, but to live for the happiness of others. And no, "God" may not punish you, but you will punish yourself, by misunderstanding your own path to happiness. And maybe that's not enough for some people, but that's enough for me.