Allen’s Philosophical Claims

What are Allen’s main philosophical conclusions? Without pretending to offer an exhaustive account,⁴ I would suggest that seven major philosophical claims recur repeatedly and consistently in his films.

Life is meaningless

While Allen is not as rude or grouchy as Boris Yellnikoff, his protagonist in Whatever Works, Yellnikoff evidently reflects the views of his creator when he announces to the audience, “What the hell does it all mean anyhow? Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nothing comes to anything.”⁵

Allen had been suggesting as much from the very beginning of his career. In Play it Again, Sam, a woman with whom Allan Felix strikes up a conversation in an art museum offers the following interpretation of the meaning of an abstract expressionist painting:

It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren, Godless eternity, like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation, forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos.

While audiences in the 1970s may have assumed that Allen’s intent here was merely to mock such gloomy ideas for comedic effect, we find that in his subsequent serious films they are presented sympathetically. In September, a scientist, played by Jack Warden, declares,

it’s all random . . . Everything is resonating aimlessly out of nothing, eventually vanishing forever. I’m not talking about the world; I’m talking about the universe. All space, all time – just temporary convulsion . . . I understand it for what it truly is – haphazard, morally neutral, and unimaginably violent.

And in Hannah and Her Sisters, which, like a novel, is explicitly divided into chapters, the following quotation from Tolstoy is featured as a chapter heading: “The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.”

There is no God

In an interview given in connection with You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Allen was asked, “What seems more plausible to you, that we’ve existed in past lives, or that there is a God?” He replies, “Neither seems plausible to me. I have a grim, scientific assessment of it. I just feel, what you see is what you get” (Itzkoff 2010).

Once again, while Allen had made numerous joking references to atheism in his early work, most notably in Love and Death, his endorsement of this position only became fully clear in his subsequent dramatic films. Allen reports that in Crimes and Misdemeanors his intent was

to illustrate in an entertaining way that there’s no God, that we’re alone in the universe, and that there is nobody out there to punish you, that there’s not going to be any kind of Hollywood ending to your life in any way (Schickel 2003: 149).

He elsewhere claims also to have “said explicitly” in that film that we inhabit “an atheistic and hopeless and godless and meaningless universe,” and that “the absence of God in the universe matters: To me it’s a damn shame that the universe doesn’t have any God or meaning” (Lax 2007: 125).

Death is inevitable, irrevocable, and horrible

Jokes expressing a fear of death and a disbelief in an afterlife abound in Allen’s early films. In Love and Death (1975), we encounter this bit of dialogue:

Boris:	Nothingness . . . nonexistence . . . black emptiness . . .
Sonja:	What did you say?
Boris:	Oh, I was just planning my future.

In his later films these concerns are presented more straightforwardly. When Mickey Sachs, Allen’s character in Hannah and Her Sisters, is reminded of the inevitability of death, he comments, “Yes, but doesn’t that ruin everything for you? That . . . just takes the pleasure out of everything. I mean, you’re gonna die, I’m gonna die, the audience is gonna die . . . Everything!”

Still, audiences might assume that such observations are advanced merely for dramatic or darkly humorous effect, as opposed to representing the true views of their author. But any such assumption is destroyed by familiarity with Allen’s frequent comments on death in interviews. Here are three representative examples: In comparison to the fear of death,

there is no other fear of significant consequence. All other fears, all other problems, one can deal with. Loneliness, lack of love, lack of talent, lack of money, everything can be dealt with. In some way, there are ways to cope. You have friends that can help you, you have doctors that can help you. But perishing is what it’s all about (Björkman 1995: 106).

[I am] preoccupied with . . . the tragedy of life, the fact that in the end you’re screwed by death, that death is ever present, that death is a constant companion in one form or another . . . (Schickel 2003: 105).

The fundamental thing behind all motivation and all activity is the constant struggle against annihilation and against death. Death is absolutely stupefying in its terror, and it renders anyone’s accomplishment meaningless (Rich 1977: 76).

There is no cosmic justice

The protagonist of Crimes and Misdemeanors, a respected ophthalmologist, arranges to have the woman with whom he is having an affair murdered. He does so, reluctantly, because he sees no other way to prevent her from revealing their affair to his wife, which, as he sees it, would destroy his family and reputation, and thus ruin his life. At the end of the film, speaking in the third person under the pretense that he is describing a character in a movie plot, he reveals the aftermath of his crime:

And after the awful deed is done, he finds that he’s plagued by deep-rooted guilt . . . He’s panic-stricken. He’s on the verge of a mental collapse, an inch away from confessing the whole thing to the police. And then one morning, he awakens. The sun is shining, his family is around him and mysteriously, the crisis has lifted. He takes his family on a vacation to Europe and as the months pass, he finds he’s not punished. In fact, he prospers. The killing gets attributed to another person . . . Now he’s scot-free. His life is completely back to normal. Back to his protected world of wealth and privilege.

Match Point also features a murdering protagonist who evades punishment. “It would be fitting if I were apprehended,” he comments. “At least there would be some small sign of justice. Some small measure of hope for the possibility of meaning.”

The argument of these films is clear. Speaking specifically of Crimes and Misdemeanors, Allen summarizes it as follows:

No higher power is going to punish us for our misdeeds if we get away with them. Knowing that, you have to choose a just life or there will be chaos, and so many people don’t do that and there is chaos . . . (Lax 1991: 362).

I was really saying, there’s no God and no justice. We wish that we lived in a world where there was a God and where these acts would be adjudicated in some way. But we don’t . . . [We live] in a world where it’s simply up to you to . . . make your moral choices. And if you can get away with it, you get away with it (Schickel 2003: 150–151).⁶

Human existence is miserable

In a memorable scene from Annie Hall, Alvy Singer tells Annie,

I feel that life is divided up into the horrible and the miserable. Those are the two categories. The horrible would be like, I don’t know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don’t know how they get through life. It’s amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you’re miserable, because that’s very lucky, to be miserable.

But does Alvy here articulate Allen’s own views? In response to a question about this very passage, Allen assures us that he does (Björkman 1995: 85), which is not surprising, given the gloomy outlook that pervades his non-comic movies, such as Interiors and September. Moreover, he peppers his interview statements with references to “the agony and terror of human existence,” and to “the overwhelming bleakness of the universe” (Lauder 2010a).

In defense of such harsh judgments, Allen invokes “the uncertainty of life, the inevitability of aging and death and death of loved ones,” “mass killings and starvation,” “holocausts” and other instances of “man-made carnage,” among other horrors (Allen 2009). Nor is such ugliness confined to human experience. Rather, Allen suggests, it pervades the natural world as well. He points out that if you would “look closely” at “a beautiful pastoral scene,” what you would see would be “pretty horrible.” “You would see violence and chaos and murder and cannibalism.” And lest you be tempted to dismiss this claim as reflecting nothing more than the bias of a notorious urbanite, note what he immediately goes on to say about “the city”: “When you come in close, you can see the bacteria and what happens between man and his fellow man. It’s a pretty miserable, ugly, horrifying thing” (qtd. in Björkman 1995: 71).

There is nothing mysterious, then, about Allen’s conclusion that “the basic thrust in life is tragic and negative” (Kelley 2006: 26), that “the metaphor for life is a concentration camp” (Rich 2006: 46),⁷ and that “human existence,” aside from some “small oases” of “delight, some charm and peace,” is “an agonizing, meaningless experience. Overall, it is a brutal, brutal, terrible experience” (Lauder 2010a). Indeed, he thinks that “everybody knows how awful the world is and what a terrible situation it is,” and that this painful truth can denied only by those who, in order to “get through” life, try to disguise or distort it through something like religion, sports, money, love, or art. And while these things “definitely serve a certain function,” in the end, Allen asserts, “they all fail to give life meaning and everyone goes to his grave in a meaningless way” (Lauder 2010a).

The fact that there is no God, afterlife, or cosmic justice makes it all the more necessary for us to meet our moral obligations, and to lead lives of authenticity and integrity

Most of Allen’s films are to some degree concerned with ethics. Consider Zelig, Allen’s mock-documentary about a man who in social situations wants so desperately to fit in that he develops the ability to take on the mannerisms, attitudes, skills, and even physical characteristics of those surrounding him. At the time of its release, the film was admired mostly for its humor, and for the technical brilliance with which Allen and his crew created the illusion that we were seeing authentic footage of a figure from the 1920s and 1930s, even though that figure was, of course, utterly fictitious. But what was often overlooked was the moral of the story – the importance of those virtues most celebrated by existentialists – namely, authenticity (thinking carefully for oneself about what is true and right, rather than passively accepting, in an effort to get along and fit in, what others think), and personal integrity (living in accordance with those convictions, and resisting the temptation to compromise them for personal advantage). The fact that Zelig winds up, albeit briefly, a Nazi, brings home the political importance of these ideals. Holocausts do not happen because millions of people suddenly become insane or evil. Rather, the film argues that they happen when a few mad or evil people succeed in attaining political power, and then millions, through cowardice and/or lazy conformity, go along with them. As Allen explains it, one of the main points Zelig tries to make is that the “desire not to make waves, carried to an extreme, could have traumatic consequences. It could lead to a conformist mentality and, ultimately, fascism” (Kakutani 2006: 74).⁸

Some viewers, even among those who admire Allen’s movies, miss this ethical thrust in his work because they see it as precluded by his atheism, pessimism, and general philosophical outlook. As Allen sees it, such critics make “a wrong assumption,” namely, that “if, as I say, life is meaningless and chaos and random, then anything goes and nothing has any meaning and one action is as good as the next.” Instead, he insists,

What I’m really saying – and it’s not hidden or esoteric, it’s just clear as a bell – is that we have to accept that the universe is godless and life is meaningless, often a terrible and brutal experience with no hope, and that love relationships are very, very hard, and that we still need to find a way to not only cope but lead a decent and moral life.

People jump to the conclusion that what I’m saying is that anything goes, but actually I’m asking the question: given the worst, how do we carry on . . . ? Now, there are plenty of people who choose to lead their lives in a completely self-centered, homicidal way. They feel, since nothing means anything and I can get away with murder, I’m going to. But one can also make the choice that you’re alive and other people are alive and you’re in a lifeboat with them and you’ve got to try and make it as decent as you can for yourself and everybody . . . If you acknowledge the awful truth of human existence and choose to be a decent human being in the face of it rather than lie to yourself that there’s going to be some heavenly reward or some punishment, it seems to me more noble. If there is a reward or a punishment or a payoff somehow and you act well, then you’re acting well not out of such noble motives (Lax 2007: 123–124).

On this view, Allen’s denial of the existence of God, an afterlife, and a system of cosmic justice does not nullify morality or make it incomprehensible, but rather underscores its importance, and lends to the struggle to lead a moral life an intensity, seriousness, and sense of urgency that it would otherwise lack. And this is so for at least three reasons: (1) If there is a God, and if this God sees to it that any imbalances in the scales of justice in this life are fully balanced in the afterlife, then I need not worry too much about my failures to treat others justly – after all, God will eventually set things right. But if we do not make these metaphysical assumptions, then my obligation to treat others fairly and decently appears to be much more stringent, for in that case there is no reason to suppose that my negligent or evil actions will ever be corrected or my victims compensated. (2) Whereas a God might be able and willing to forgive me for my sins, and somehow erase them, as if I had never committed them, the absence of God would seem to preclude such a miracle, thus rendering my foul deeds a permanent and irrevocable stain on the universe. In that case, it is even more important than it would otherwise be to get it right the first time. (3) Finally, if I believe that there is an afterlife, and a God concerned to punish wrongdoing and reward virtuous conduct, then my motive to do the right thing might be at least partly selfish, and thus less than fully moral. This is not the case if I do the right thing with no expectation of reward for doing so, and while believing that I would suffer no negative consequence for failing to do so. As Allen puts it, it is

only when you can accept [that] the universe doesn’t have any God or meaning [that you can] go on to lead . . . a decent, moral life. You can only lead it if you acknowledge what you’re up against to begin with and shuck off all the fairy tales that lead you to make choices in life that you’re making not really for moral reasons but for taking down a big score in the afterlife (Lax 2007: 125).

Art is overrated and has no social value

Allen’s tepid evaluation of art (to be documented below) is surprising. After all, he has devoted his professional life to artistic creation. He has written thousands of jokes, and several comic monologues, short stories, plays, and screenplays; he has performed as a stand-up comedian, stage actor, and film actor; and, most notably, he has directed over 40 films. Moreover, one of his principal hobbies is the clarinet – he practices daily, and publicly performs on the instrument weekly in a Dixieland jazz band. Since he is obviously a thoughtful person, and concerned about existential issues, one would suppose that his choices of career and avocation would tell us a great deal about his attitude toward art. For surely he would not have chosen to spend his time in these ways had he not thought such activities to be meaningful and valuable. Accordingly, Ian Jarvie, a philosopher and distinguished film scholar, argues that Allen’s tireless dedication to creative work evidences, despite his despairing rhetoric, an outlook of “optimism” and “hope” (Jarvie 2004: 65).

Furthermore, some of Allen’s films seem to point to art as one of the very few things that make life worthwhile. In a famous scene from Manhattan, the character Allen plays poses to himself the very question of why life is worth living, and answers by offering the following list of items:

For me . . . oh, I would say Groucho Marx, to name one thing, and Willie Mays, and . . . the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, and . . . Louis Armstrong’s recording of “Potato Head Blues.” Swedish movies, naturally. Sentimental Education by Flaubert. Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra. Those incredible apples and pears by Cézanne. The crabs at Sam Wo’s. Tracy’s face.

Notice that 8 of these 11 items are from the art world, and that the remaining three, Willie Mays, the crab dish, and Tracy’s face, are all things the appreciation of which would likely be primarily aesthetic. (And Allen has made it clear that this list expresses his own views in that, while his personal list would be longer, all of these items would be on it: Björkman 1995: 120; Kelley 2006: 17.) Similarly, in Hannah and Her Sisters, Mickey Sachs, who had just been considering suicide because he wasn’t sure he wanted to go on living in “a Godless universe,” renounces suicide and “actually begins to enjoy” himself only after starting to watch a funny movie in a theater into which he had, in his despair, aimlessly wandered.

So why does Allen repeatedly issue such statements as that “the artist is much too revered” (Kakutani 1996),⁹ and that “there’s no social value in art – not just comedy, but no social value in art at all, anyplace, anytime?” (Guthrie 1978: 144). How can such a dismissive view be reconciled with the two pro-art points just mentioned, those concerning Allen’s career choices and the content of some of his films?

With regard to the first point, Allen’s testimony, reiterated on numerous occasions, is that his decision to spend his time making films is not based on a high regard for the value of art, but rather on the fact that this activity is uniquely suited to distracting him from the horrors of existence:

[Working on a film is] an important distraction. I’ve always felt that if one can arrange one’s life so that one can obsess about small things, it keeps you from obsessing about the really big things. If you obsess about the big things, you are impotent and frightened, because there’s nothing you can do about aging and death. But the little things you can spend days obsessing about, such as a good punch line for the third act. And this is a nice problem to obsess over because it’s not surgery (Geist 1992: 41).¹⁰

Nor is its propensity to create endless distracting busywork the only, or even the primary, feature of filmmaking that renders it ideal for providing a long-term refuge from reality. The other point is that filmmaking amounts to the creation of an unreal fantasy world in which one can live continuously for months at a time. Allen has often explained that this is a big part of what motivates him to make movies:

I’m on the set . . . I live in a fake world for ten months. And by living in that world I’m defying reality in a way – or at least hiding from reality . . . That’s what it’s all about for me . . . That’s the impetus for the work . . . I get to create a fake situation and live in that situation . . . I control the reality for that period of time, and live amongst beautiful women and guys who are brilliant and guys who make witty remarks . . . And it’s great” (Schickel 2003: 145–146).¹¹

We can now understand why, from Allen’s standpoint as a creative artist, art has such a limited value. For fantasy is not a viable alternative to reality. Art can create a fantasy world, which can postpone one’s encounter with the horrors of reality. But since a postponement of a confrontation with life’s problems is not at all the same thing as a permanent solution to them, art ultimately fails the artist, and reality inevitably wins in the end.

And if the value of art to its creators is severely limited, so is it for the audience, and for the same reason. That Allen sometimes suggests that art is one of the best things available to us, one of the few things that make life worth living, is to be taken, then, not as indicating his high regard for art so much as his low regard for nearly everything else. Or, to put it another way, he sees art, whether from the standpoint of creation or appreciation, not as a singularly valuable part of reality, but rather as a (brief, unsustainable, and thus ultimately less than fully satisfying) escape from reality. It is art that provides the “small oases of delight” that briefly relieve the horrors and brutality of human existence. As Allen puts it,

You know, watching the Marx Brothers or a Knicks game or listening to great jazz, you get a great feeling of ecstasy. You’re in a great moment watching Michael Jordan. But then it passes, and the dark reality of life starts to creep back in (Kaplan 2006: 180–181).

That art represents the abandonment of reality in favor of an unreal and unsustainable fantasy world is a recurring theme in Allen’s films. Consider the famous scene in Annie Hall where Annie and Alvy are standing in line for the movies and a professor standing behind them loudly broadcasts his opinions, first about Fellini and then about Marshall McLuhan. When the professor overhears Alvy complaining to Annie about his overbearing lecturing, a confrontation between Alvy and the professor ensues, which Alvy wins by triumphantly producing McLuhan himself, who had been hidden behind a movie poster. To Alvy’s – and the audience’s – delight, McLuhan immediately lets the professor have it: “You know nothing of my work! How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!” Alvy then makes Allen’s point about the unreality of art by turning to address the audience and saying, “Boy, if life were only like this!” As Sandy Bates puts the point in Stardust Memories, the problem is that “You can’t control life. It doesn’t wind up perfectly. Only–only art you can control. Art and masturbation. Two areas in which I am an absolute expert.”

An obvious rejoinder to Allen would be that many works of art, including some that he himself is on record as enjoying and admiring, have content that is far from escapist in nature. Some of these works directly address, and often grimly, the very existential issues that so perplex and concern him. So might not some of these works be valued, not for providing an enjoyable break from reality, but rather for delivering wise advice as to how reality, in all of its harshness, might be confronted and navigated more successfully?

Allen answers this question negatively. For one thing, there is no reason to suppose that the ability to make art should be correlated with practical wisdom of the sort Allen is seeking. But the main problem, in his view, is simply that a large part of what makes life so tragic is precisely that no one has any good answers to life’s terrible existential dilemmas. (Recall the words of Mickey in Hannah and Her Sisters: “Millions of books written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds, and, in the end, none of ’em knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do”). So, while Allen readily concedes that “I’ve known moments of great happiness in my life thanks to art,” he informs us in the same breath that art “was never a solace to me . . . Because, when it comes to ponderings about the meaning of life and existential anguish, art never brings any answers – it’s never brought me personally any answers” (Ciment and Garbarz 2006: 171).¹² Even the darkest films of Bergman, and the most serious novels of Dostoevsky and stories of Kafka, then, are on this view valuable only for the distraction and amusement they provide. The difference in value between such works and, say, a silly lowbrow comedy, is merely quantitative, rather than qualitative. As Allen puts it, “Art to me has always been entertainment for intellectuals. Mozart or Rembrandt or Shakespeare are entertainers on a very, very high level” (Björkman 1995: 103).

Film and Philosophy

As thought provoking as these seven philosophical conclusions are, almost as interesting is the fact that Allen has chosen to present them in the medium of film. But is film a good vehicle for the presentation of philosophical ideas? And is the aesthetic value of Allen’s movies, in particular, enhanced by their philosophical content? It is ironic that an affirmative answer to these questions depends, for its justification, on a repudiation of Allen’s own philosophy of art.

For if, as Allen insists, art can aspire to be nothing more than “entertainment for intellectuals,” then the inclusion of philosophical ideas in his films could increase their artistic value only by making them more entertaining – that is, by increasing their capacity to amuse us, to take our minds off our troubles, to distract us from (as Allen sees it) the hideous realities of human existence. But the entertainment effects of the philosophical content of Allen’s movies are, at best, mixed. On the positive side, such content usually requires characters who are literate, educated, thoughtful, and articulate. Spending time in the company of such people can be enjoyable, and, given the reluctance of most Hollywood filmmakers to include any material that might prove inaccessible to a significant portion of a mass audience, refreshingly different from our typical moviegoing experience. Similarly, Allen’s subject matter allows him to work with an expanded range of reference, relative to other filmmakers. Some of the best jokes in Allen’s films are about such figures as Kafka, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Socrates, Strindberg, and the Greek gods. The pleasure one takes in these jokes is enhanced, once again, by the rarity of such references in films – one especially enjoys hearing (good) jokes about subjects not joked about elsewhere.

On the negative side, however, Allen’s more philosophically oriented films remind us of the darker aspects of human life and suggest that there is no possibility of escaping them. Such intellectual content seems ill designed to bring an audience amusement or diversion or distraction. So the inclusion of Allen’s philosophical ideas can improve his movies aesthetically only if the value of artworks, such as films, can consist in something other than mere entertainment. But can it? What else, aside from amusement, can art offer us?

A partial reply can be gleaned from the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, a philosopher Allen is on record as admiring.¹³ In “What is Literature?,” Sartre argues that the author–reader relation stands as the very model of what authentic interpersonal relationships (roughly, relationships that are honest, nonexploitative, generous, and fully reciprocal) can be like (Sartre 1988). Authors do not simply inject their ideas directly into the heads of their readers, who passively receive them; rather, authors must appeal to the freedom and generosity of their readers as they engage in the active project of interpreting, and thus bringing to life, the authors’ works. And on the other hand, readers, in attempting to understand a text, must appeal to the freedom of the author, and recognize the work to be the product of free, creative decisions. There is no room for coercion or domination in this exchange, which writers and readers enter into voluntarily, for their mutual benefit.

Generalizing Sartre’s ideas about literature to other arts, including film, yields the conclusion that Allen’s movies can achieve more than mere entertainment. At their best, they can stand as examples of meaningful interpersonal communication. When an intelligent, sensitive person shares with us his or her thoughts and feelings about important issues of interest to us, the experience is valuable. It might inform us of something we had not previously known; it might challenge or inspire us to do better than we have done previously; it might console us by showing us that someone else has suffered as we have; it might add excitement to our lives by causing us to experience intense feelings; and, perhaps most importantly, it might provoke in us a thoughtful, questioning, and creative response.

But the sincere communication of ideas is not, by itself, art. There is a difference between, on the one hand, a straightforward presentation of an argument in, say, a political speech or a philosophical essay, and, on the other, the inclusion of philosophical content in a beautiful painting or poem, or in a stirring piece of music, or in an engrossing story. The inclusion of philosophical content can enhance a work of art, I would suggest, only when it does not overwhelm the other aesthetic concerns of the piece, but is rather well integrated with them. The ideas should be interwoven into the texture of works that can be fully appreciated on other levels, such as for their humor, suspense, or compelling plot.

Consider, in this light, the scene in Hannah and Her Sisters in which Frederick, the painter played by Max von Sydow, addresses Lee, his domestic partner, played by Barbara Hershey, on her return to the apartment they share. He greets her by issuing the following report:

You missed a very dull TV show about Auschwitz. More gruesome film clips, and more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of millions. The reason why they could never answer the question “How could it possibly happen?” is that it’s the wrong question. Given what people are, the question is “Why doesn’t it happen more often?”

The scene works on at least three levels. First, thanks in large part to von Sydow’s exuberant performance, it is pleasurable to watch from the standpoint of pure spectacle. There is something compelling about seeing a charismatic person expounding his views with such force and passion; and the contrast between the horrifying content of his convictions and the self-satisfied relish with which he delivers them is darkly comic. Second, the scene is effective in terms of helping to establish Frederick’s character, which, in turn, is both intrinsically interesting and helpful for advancing the plot (for example, Lee has begun an affair with another man and will ultimately leave Frederick; this scene helps us to understand why she does so). Finally, the content of Frederick’s statement, which, as Allen confirms, represents his own thinking on this subject (Allen 1991: 7–8), is worth pondering in its own right, in the sense that its interest would not be diminished if it were considered quite apart from its function as part of a work of art.

Moreover, fiction facilitates the construction of thought experiments. A storyteller can probe an idea by asking what would happen if such-and-such happened to a person like so-and-so. The resources of film, a medium encompassing both sight and sound, and one that accommodates an almost limitless variety of techniques of communication (including flashbacks, close-ups, juxtaposing images on a split screen, subtitles, music, and so forth), enable a skilled filmmaker to carry out such experiments with extraordinary subtlety and communicative power.

Consider, once again, Allen’s argument against cosmic justice. In mounting such an argument Allen is confronting a belief that is so deeply rooted in our emotional needs, and so recalcitrant in the face of counterevidence, that some psychologists label it a “delusion” (Lerner 1980). A growing body of experimental psychology research indicates that when we are confronted with what would appear on its face to be an instance of gross injustice, we tend to construct, often out of thin air, and then stubbornly to believe in, a theory of the event according to which the victim did something to bring about this state of affairs, and thus deserves his or her fate.¹⁴

It is not difficult to understand why we might have a powerful emotionally based interest in insisting that life is fundamentally just. For one thing, if it were not, this would seem to impose on us a burden to try to help the victims of injustice. We can therefore save ourselves a good deal of trouble if we can only convince ourselves that those who suffer had it coming. Even more importantly, the belief that life is utterly and mercilessly unfair would reveal to us our own terrifying vulnerability, showing us that we, too, stand in danger, through no fault of our own, of suffering some horrific catastrophe, such as losing one’s job, home, health, sanity, child, or life (Fine 2006: 61).

How might one counter this deep-rooted bias, this emotionally driven insistence that justice always prevails? While there is room for a variety of approaches, Allen’s is to use the medium of film to present examples, both in Crimes and Misdemeanors and in Match Point, of individuals who evade punishment or any other kind of significant negative consequence, even though they murder victims who clearly do not deserve to be killed. To be sure, not everyone is convinced by an argument based on imagination, rather than fact; but then not everyone is convinced by even the most rigorous and most consistently replicated experimental research. If we are biased against seeing the world a certain way, a powerful artistic presentation of that way of seeing can help to break down that bias. A film can compel us to look at the world in new ways, thus making us more receptive than we otherwise would be to evidence that our old ways of thinking are inaccurate. Of course, the case made in the film still has to ring true – the filmmaker has to persuade us that his or her vision is plausible, that events really could unfold in this way rather than that, that a character like this one is believable, and that he or she really would be likely to do such-and-such in response to so-and-so. But if the filmmaker passes this test (and Allen, in his best work, does), then his thought experiments get a fair hearing, we consider his ideas seriously, and he has a chance to persuade us of the truth of his vision.

Assessing Allen’s Philosophical Claims

Very well, then. Is Allen’s vision true? It is noteworthy that admiration for his films is wholly consistent with a negative answer to this question, as is evidenced by the praise Allen has received from avowed theists, including members of the clergy. Robert E. Lauder, a Catholic priest, citing “the themes he presents and the cinematic skill with which he presents them,” declares that “Allen has no equal among contemporary filmmakers” (Lauder 2010b). And Francis Schaeffer, a prolific and influential Presbyterian pastor, praises Allen as “a human being who has simply looked life in the face and has the courage to say what he sees” (Schaeffer 1994: 355).

But it is not quite right to say that Lauder and Schaeffer simply reject Allen’s philosophical stance entirely. Rather, they suggest that he has reasoned correctly, and has drawn the right conclusions from his atheism. As Lauder puts it, “If there were no God, surely Allen’s extreme pessimism – and the extreme language in which he expresses it – would be right on target” (Lauder 2010b). Schaeffer concurs: “If there is no personal God, nothing beyond what our eyes can see and our hands can touch, then Woody Allen is right: life is both meaningless and terrifying” (Schaeffer 1994: 355). But, of course, Lauder and Schaeffer reject Allen’s atheism. The fact that they praise him for the conclusions he draws from it suggests, then, another reason they may welcome his films. Perhaps, by (as they see it) showing how horrific are the consequences of atheism, Allen is inadvertently making their position, Christian theism, look irresistibly attractive.

So Allen, Lauder, and Schaeffer, though they disagree on almost everything else, agree on the conditional judgment that if there is no God, afterlife, or cosmic justice, then life is meaningless and terrible. It seems doubtful, however, that this conditional judgment is true. Despite what Allen and the two clergymen assert, it is far from clear that the nonexistence of God, an afterlife, or cosmic justice would render our lives meaningless and terrible, or, for that matter, that the existence of God, an afterlife, or cosmic justice would help us to solve our deepest philosophical and existential problems.

One problem that we face, and one for which God is often proposed as a solution, is cosmological. We wonder about the origin of being itself. Surely the fact of existence – that there is something rather than nothing – calls for an explanation. How did the universe, with all its vastness, come into being?

The answer, we are often told, is that God, a personal, spiritual being of infinite power and goodness, created the universe. Notice, however, that this merely pushes the problem back a step. If the existence of the universe calls for an explanation, then surely so does the existence of God. Some might reply that God requires no explanation, that God has always existed, and thus that God stands as an exception to the rule that generates this issue – namely, that there is a causal explanation for the existence of everything. But if we are entitled to assume that something has always existed, and thus was not caused to exist, we have no reason to postulate that this entity is something other than the universe itself, or perhaps matter-energy. In this way, we save a step, and we refrain from having to posit the existence of something which, in radical contrast to matter-energy, we do not on independent grounds know to exist.

To be clear, the point of this argument is not that we have the answers to our cosmological question. We do not. The point, rather, is, one, that the existence of God would not solve the problem, but rather would merely push it back a step; and, two, that, to the extent that the question is answerable, the nonexistence of God would not stand in the way of our answering it.

The same reasoning applies when we examine other problems for which God has been proposed as a solution. Consider, for example, the orderliness of the universe – the fact that the planets move about without crashing into each other, and that, in general, physical objects appear to behave in a regular, predictable, law-like fashion. Some argue that blind, purposeless forces cannot produce such orderliness. On this view, the orderliness of the universe entails that it is the product of design. Then, since design implies a designer, we arrive at the conclusion that the design-like features of the universe constitute evidence for the existence of God.

Once again, however, this argument, far from solving the problem, merely pushes it back a step. If, as the argument assumes, order implies design, then what accounts for the orderliness of a mind capable of creating the universe? Clearly, if the major premise driving this argument were true, then we would have to infer that the well-ordered mind of God is itself the work of an intelligent designer, that this designer’s mind is, in turn, the product of another designer, and so on infinitely. If, on the other hand, one counters that perhaps God’s mind is an exception to the general rule that order implies design, then, once again, we can save a step and avoid exotic postulations by assuming that some aspect of the natural world is capable of generating nondesigned order.

And the same logic applies when we turn to ethics. If we have problems with ethics (for example, we don’t understand the basis for morality, or cannot determine in any given case which of the courses of action available to us would be morally right, and which morally wrong), will turning to God help? The problem with such an approach becomes clear as soon as we notice that it would not be moral to obey the evil commands of an evil creator. Thus, before it would make sense for us to look for moral guidance from God, we would need to determine that this God is indeed good. But this, in turn, implies that appealing to God in order to help us figure out what is good or bad gets things precisely backwards. We would first have to know something about what is good or bad before we could possibly know whether any given purported moral authority can be relied on for sound moral advice. Thus, once again, the postulation of God, far from solving the problem, merely pushes it back a step. If our ignorance of morality is such that we cannot determine what is right and wrong in the realm of human action, then that ignorance also precludes us from knowing that God is good, or that God’s moral teachings are sound.

Since Allen is an atheist, and also a moralist, it seems likely that he would accept these arguments. After all, he obviously would not deny that the universe exists, he is highly unlikely to deny that it exhibits a degree of order, and he is on record as affirming that we have moral obligations to one another. Consequently, his atheism entails that he does not think that these things imply the existence of God. As we have seen, he explicitly argues that the absence of God in no way undercuts morality.¹⁵

It is odd, then, that he appeals to the nonexistence of God in arguing that human existence is meaningless and terrible. For the same arguments that show that the nonexistence of God would not create problems in connection with cosmology, orderliness, or ethics, and that the existence of God would do nothing to solve these problems, also show that the nonexistence of God would not render human life meaningless, and that, to the extent that there is a problem of meaninglessness in our lives, the existence of God would do nothing to solve it.

Allen’s reason for thinking otherwise is presented, by means of an analogy, in a scene from The Purple Rose of Cairo. Tom, a character from a film who has magically walked off the movie screen and into real life, and Cecilia, a filmgoer with whom he has started a relationship, discuss God.

Cecilia:	You do believe in God, don’t you?
Tom:	Meaning?
Cecilia:	The reason for everything, the world, the universe.
Tom:	Oh, I think I know what you mean – the two men who wrote The Purple Rose of Cairo, Irving Sachs and R.H. Levine, the writers who collaborate on films.
Cecilia:	No, no, I’m talking about something much bigger than that. No, think for a minute. A reason for everything. Otherwise, it would be like a movie with no point, and no happy ending.

The analogy suggests that our lives can have meaning only if they play a significant role in a sequence of events that is itself meaningful and planned. But a moment’s reflection shows that not just any role in any plan will do. Suppose our assigned role were simply to suffer for the sadistic pleasure of a cruel creator, or to develop our best human capacities so that eventually we would be worthy of serving as slaves of the superior beings of the future who are the creator’s true chosen ones. While this would give our lives meaning to the God who assigned to us these roles, it is far from clear that it would enhance our own sense of the meaningfulness of our lives (and that, after all, is the issue).

But suppose, on the other hand, that a God’s plan for us were something that we would regard more favorably. Suppose, for example, that it were clear that God intended us to seek knowledge and understanding, to express ourselves creatively, to develop deep, caring relationships with one another, to strive to attain admirable character traits, such as courage, honesty, and kindness, and to enjoy to the fullest all of the joys and pleasures available to us, consistent with respecting and fostering others’ ability to do the same. While those who live life in accordance with this plan, or one like it, might well experience their lives as meaningful, it is far from clear that the meaning would derive from the fact that the plan originated from an external source, as opposed to flowing from the rich and positive content of the plan itself. If anything, originating in an external source might diminish the meaning of the plan for us, on the general grounds that, all else equal, it is more meaningful for us to make choices for ourselves, to carry out our own plans, than it is to fulfill roles assigned to us by others.

As we have seen, though, there is something else, according to Allen, that does lessen the meaningfulness of life: death. But there is something odd about this claim, and Allen, in the joke that his character delivers directly to the audience at the beginning of Annie Hall, shows that he is aware of it:

There’s an old joke. Uh, two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of ’em says, “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know; and such small portions.” Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly.

The joke turns on an inconsistency that Allen appears to be acknowledging as his own. If life is terrible, then we should be relieved, not devastated, to know that it will end fairly soon. But if we desperately don’t want it to end, then it must not be so terrible. So our unhappiness at the prospect of death, far from showing life to be meaningless to us, rather underscores its meaning and value.

In any case, it is unclear why, exactly, our mortality should render us unable to derive deep satisfaction from the time we have available to us. After all, even if we were immortal, the individual meaningful actions that we undertake, such as watching a film, eating a meal, talking to a friend, going for a swim at the beach, and so forth, would still endure in time only briefly. The fact that they come to an end and do not last forever, and that we know this about them, does not seem to diminish their value to us. Nor is the worth of these activities lessened by the fact that some of them are not in any obvious way embedded in projects or plans, or that others of them are attached to projects that are eventually completed and thus discontinued. So while immortality may have much to recommend it, there is no apparent reason why our mortality should render our lives meaningless.

Nor should our mortality, or the nonexistence of God, make our lives miserable. While Allen is certainly right to point out that there is much cause for misery in the world, if one is lucky enough to have reasonably good health, adequate economic means, a few true friends, a sense of humor, and a capacity to take an interest in the vast spectacle that the world presents to us, it appears that it is possible to live a modestly happy life. The point is not that it is easy to attain all of these good things. It is not. Rather, the point is that a consideration of them underscores the limited relevance of the factors that Allen takes to be crucial – God and immortality. For one who does attain all of these positives can likely achieve happiness without God or an afterlife; and a physically sick, desperately poor, friendless, humorless, bored person can’t possibly achieve it even with God and eternal life. Assuming that certain minimum external requirements for happiness are met, the question of whether human experience is miserable or not probably depends more on individual psychology and perspective than on a purely logical evaluation of the relevant evidence. Life throws at us a rich mixture of good and bad, and while the mixture varies radically from person to person, partly as a matter of luck (as Allen rightly insists), and partly as a result of the wise or foolish choices that we make, probably an even greater factor in determining our level of happiness is our skill (or lack thereof) at fully appreciating the good, and at calmly taking in stride and dealing with the bad.

1 Allen’s friend and biographer, Eric Lax, lists philosophy, along with magic and the clarinet, as one of Allen’s three “constant avocations” (Lax 1975: 37), and reports that “the problems inherent in the existential dilemma of man” are Allen’s “daily preoccupation” (Lax 1991: 151).

2 Given that Allen’s films are works of fiction, it may be questioned how one can identify philosophical “claims” in them and attribute them to Allen. A philosophical-sounding utterance might, after all, be presented for some other purpose (for example, to be funny, to establish a character, or to advance a story), and the views expressed might merely be those of a fictional character, rather than those of Allen himself. But on the other hand, Allen is a prolific filmmaker, and the same ideas recur repeatedly in his movies, making his intentions hard to miss. According to his own testimony, his “movies have been very self-expressive. They’re expressive of observations of mine or feelings of mine” (Lax 2007: 311). Moreover, he reports that the philosophy he expresses in his films “has been consistent over the years . . . The ideas have always been the same” (Vilkomerson 2009). Finally, in interviews Allen has not been at all shy about explaining what he has attempted to communicate in his films. I have generally found his self-interpretations convincing.

3 Some argue that the pursuit of truth no longer makes sense as a goal in these postmodern times. Detailed responses to these anti-truth arguments can be found in Lynch (2005), Blackburn (2007), and Detmer (2003).

4 A more complete account would have to include Allen’s claim that our lives are governed substantially by luck, his ideas about the difference between fantasy and reality, and his thoughts about the extreme importance, but almost impossible difficulty, of love relationships.

5 Allen explains that he “did want to portray Larry’s take on life as closer to reality than other people. He might seem like a complainer, a malcontent, like a misanthrope, a cynic, a nihilist – whatever words you want to impute to him, but there’s a great deal of sad truth to his perceptions. And I wanted to make that very clear at the end of the movie” (Vilkomerson 2009).

6 Allen has articulated this self-interpretation many times, and has forcefully defended it against critics who read Crimes and Misdemeanors as asserting that the ophthalmologist, and presumably wrongdoers in general, are destined to suffer as a consequence of their crimes. See, for example, Björkman (1995: 226), Lax (2007: 25, 122, 358), and Lee (2002: 162–163, quoting from personal correspondence with Allen).

13 See, for example, Lax (1991: 351; 2007: 85), Björkman (1995: 72), and Lee (2002: 223). Note also that Sartre is sometimes mentioned in Allen’s films (for example, in a scene near the beginning of Husbands and Wives, Mia Farrow’s character is shown holding a book with Sartre’s name clearly visible on the cover; and, in Anything Else, Amanda gives Jerry a gift of Sartre’s plays No Exit and The Flies).

14 A good brief account of some of the experiments supporting this claim can be found in Fine (2006: 60–64).

15 Note that morality and punishment are distinct, and that the former is logically prior to the latter. One must first do something wrong (or right) in order to deserve punishment (or praise). Thus, while it is true that, in Allen’s view, the nonexistence of God entails that many crimes go unpunished, this would undercut morality only if evading punishment for wrongdoing somehow cancelled out the wrongdoing.

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