Crimes and Misdemeanors
“I’m going out the window.”
by Jonathan McDonald
[This review is the second part of a Double Feature on Woody Allen. Last week we reviewed Annie Hall.]
“Everything had gone right since he had died, but how I wished there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry.” That quote is from Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, but it almost could have fit in perfectly with Woody Allen’s magnum opus of moral and religious exploration. While Allen often tosses out monologues and dialogues concerning religion which seem mostly interested in eliciting a laugh, Crimes and Misdemeanors is literally a deadly serious look at the problem of the triumph of evil, and of its escape from justice.
Judah Rosenthal (Martin Landau) is a successful ophthalmologist who mingles in high society, is loved by many for his philanthropy, and is an atheist. The philosophical matters of religion don’t seem to have deeply affected Judah’s life until his occasional lover Dolores (Anjelica Huston) threatens to uncover not only his infidelity, but also his monetary indiscretions, which could destroy him professionally. Judah engages in frequent discussions about morality with a rabbi (Sam Waterston) who is also his patient. Surely it is not a random fact that he holds this position of power over a religious leader, nor that the rabbi, under Judah’s supervision, is irreversibly losing his sight.
Judah’s conscience rebels against seriously considering the only practical way of eliminating the possibility of damage to himself: murder. The great bulk of the film, comprising its middle section, depicts a wrestling match between Judah and his guilt. It is a guilt born of his religiously Jewish conscience formed in childhood–“The eyes of God see all,” says his father in one interactive flashback–and Judah tries to sort out whether this conscience is harmonious or dissonant with his atheistic beliefs, whether or not his guilty feelings can simply be discarded in favor of his own convenience. The way in which this conflict is ended within his soul is secretly horrifying but publicly mundane. By the time he confesses to an apathetic cuckold, he is no longer even capable of the movement of repentance necessary for a real confession. No human eyes are on him any more, but what about God’s?
There is a running subplot about a documentary filmmaker named Cliff (Woody Allen) and his self-destructing family, and man who seems eternally overpowered by those around him. While Judah is wealthy and well-respected by his family and colleagues, Cliff is despised by his wife and brother-in-law, and cannot seem to gain the respect of others in his profession. The only person who genuinely seems to enjoy his company is his young niece, to whom he has become something of an older brother figure. While he faces no moral dilemma like Judah’s, he provides another perspective on the matter of romantic love. He seems surrounded by romantic disintegration; at one point he screams out in disgust upon hearing his sister’s story of a sordidly-ended romance. Cliff would never be tempted to the extremes that Judah performed to rid himself of scandal, but perhaps only because Cliff doesn’t have that much to lose. The worst way that he acts out is to passive-aggressively insult his unjustly successful brother-in-law through subtly editing a documentary about the man. One can hardly have a nervous breakdown about one’s troubled conscience in such a situation.
A comparison with Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment is surely encouraged by the film title. The ruminations of the guilty conscience bear a striking resemblance, and the endless talking in the film match the novel’s inner monologues. What punishments even exist in this film? Do the unjust always escape punishment while the oppressed poor inevitably continue to be oppressed? It is like a filmic embodiment of the Davidic psalms, without their final expressions of hope in God’s justice. “Without the Law, it’s all darkness,” as the rabbi says.
Rating: Unforgettable
In Brief
by Philip Bassett
Like Kurosawa, Woody Allen has a love for literature that impacts his films. This love is never more apparent than in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Match Point (2005), movies about the nature of crime in the spirit of Dostoevsky’s famous novel, Crime and Punishment. In spite of the years between their origination, these movies can be described as two sides of the same coin. Both are about men who want a life without consequences badly enough to break the law in order to get it. What they discover is that conscience is a construction and morality is a game, one that the Nietzsches of our civilization play best. Those who think otherwise come off as weak. Notice, the lawbreaker is an eye doctor, and man of faith is blind. This is a nihilistic variation of Dostoevsky’s theme, one that Allen presents with unconsoling consistency. Unlike the world of his literary predecessor, there is no punishment here. The change is in the title.
Rating: Unforgettable
Written on October 14, 2009 by Jonathan
Points of Interest: On DVD, Woody Allen
Letters to the Editor
No letters yet.
Leave a letter!
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://thephotoplay.com/blog/2009/10/crimes-and-misdemeanors/trackback/