235 - Woody Allen's Theological Imagination

Woody Allen's Theological Imagination

By Gary Commins

"'To you, I'm an atheist. To God, I'm the loyal opposition.'...Allen comes out of the Jewish tradition which, from its scriptural roots, has poked and prodded the powerful. He turns this protest against a powerful God, saying 'Thou hast a good job. Don't blow it.'"

SANDY Bates sits on a train. The only sound to break through the silence is that of a clock ticking. Bates looks around at the other passengers. Their faces are morose, morbid, haunted, suspicious. One man cries. People return his gaze without expression. The clock ticks on. He looks out the window to see another train just beginning to pull out of the station. A party is in full swing. People are laughing. A woman looks at him enticingly, flirtatiously. He calls the conductor over to examine his ticket. He must be on the wrong train. He gets up and tries to open the door to get out. A priest, among others, looks on distantly. The door is locked. The clock keeps ticking. The train pulls out. He yanks on the cord to stop the train. It falls into his hands. He bangs on door and window alike in frustration, unable to get out.¹

If the actor on the screen were not Woody Allen, the audience would not be laughing. He brings humor to the absurdity and the tragedy of life. Throughout his works-movies, plays, books-Allen has consistently shown life to be a mystery rather than a problem that can be solved like a puzzle or a riddle. He takes up profound questions about the meaning of life, about evil and suffering, and about God with a profound sense of their inscrutability-and the dark humor of it all.

I

Allen delights in pairing ultimate concerns with silly ones. His mother-in-law, in "Take the Money and Run," has conversations with God about "salvation and interior decorating." Elsewhere, he summarizes his parents' values as "God and carpeting."² He thinks about Jesus Christ: "If he was a carpenter, I wonder what he charged for

Gary Commins is Vicar of St. Michael's University Episcopal Church in Isla Vista, California and Episcopal Chaplain at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A graduate of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, he has written several liturgical dramas and comedies. He also serves on the National Executive Council of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship.

¹Stardust Memories." All works by Woody Allen, unless otherwise noted.

²The Nightclub Years, 1964-68."

236 - Woody Allen's Theological Imagination

bookshelves."³ In a conversation with a nun, they agree that Jesus Christ was "extremely well-adjusted for an only child."⁴ His philosophical statements become enlightening and wistful examinations of the inability of the human race to come to grips adequately with the universe: "Eternal nothingness is O.K. if you're dressed for it."⁵ "Is knowledge knowable? If not, how do we know this?"⁶ A philosopher "differentiated between existence and Existence, and knew one was preferable, but could never remember which."⁷ He describes himself as a "teleological, existential atheist" which means "I believe that there's an intelligence to the universe with the exception of parts of New Jersey."⁸ In "Stardust Memories," Sandy Bates carries on an imagined conversation with a super-intelligent being:

Bates: Why is there so much suffering?

Being: This is unanswerable.

Bates: Is there a God?

Being: These are the wrong questions.

Right or wrong, these questions fill his works: questions about relationships, about the meaning of life, about God, about death, about morality, about alienation, about hope. His questions never find complete answers.

In New Orleans, a Haitian "conjure man," a leftover from a superstitious era, does his business on the street. Obviously, he provides passing entertainment for profit in a more scientific, sophisticated age. A policeman tells him to move on. They argue. "When it is over, the policeman is four inches tall."⁹ In Woody Allen's world, nothing can be counted on and nothing can be counted out. Life is mystery. It cannot be solved. It is absurd. It does not make sense.

In the film, "Love and Death," Boris is suddenly gripped by a terrible feeling from out of nowhere. His marriage had finally overcome the initial difficulty that his wife, Sonia, did not love him. Now triumphant, he is seized with an urge to commit suicide. He discusses the crisis with a friend:

Boris: I feel a void at the center of my being.

Friend: What kind of a void.

Boris: An empty void. I fell a full void a month ago but it was just something I ate.

³"Love and Death."

⁴"The Nightclub Years."

⁵"My Philosophy," Getting Even (New York: Warner Books, 197 1) p. 3 1.

⁶"Spring Bulletin," ibid., p. 49.

⁷"Remembering Needleman," Side Effects (New York: Random House, 1980), p. 5.

⁸"Sleeper."

⁹"Reminiscences: Places and People," Side Effects, p. 81.

237 - Woody Allen's Theological Imagination

He returns to such amusing distinctions between physical and existential nausea in many subtle ways. In the play, "Death," a killer is on the loose. In the dark night, sweat beads up under everyone's clothing, sweat that always lies in wait for release by an omnipresent fear. Kleinman and a doctor hear a scream.

Doctor: Do you hear footsteps behind us?

Kleinman: I've been hearing footsteps behind me since I was eight years old.¹⁰

His characters are anxious, fearful, haunted. His leading men are almost always peculiarly Allenesque. They seem to attract an undue number of crises. They seem unable to pull their lives together. They seem very much like ourselves.

The only way to avoid the anxiety is through not really living. In "Annie Hall," the only "happy" couple Allen encounters has found happiness because neither one has any opinions, ideas, or thoughts. In "Love and Death," the following exchange takes place:

Sonia: The only truly happy person I know is Berdykov the village idiot.

Boris: Well, it's easy to be happy, you know, when your one concern in life is figuring out how much saliva to dribble.

Is ignorance bliss? Perhaps. But Allen is certain that intelligence, knowledge, sensitivity to the misery of the human condition, an acute awareness of one's self and of others all breed anxiety, grief, and sometimes fear.

We only add to the problem if we try to avoid it, much as we might like to. In "Stardust Memories," Sandy is told that "too much reality is not what the people want.... Human suffering doesn't sell tickets in Kansas City." In "Manhattan," Isaac reflects on a short story to take place in New York City in which people are "constantly creating these real unnecessary, neurotic problems for themselves because it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about the universe." If people become preoccupied with these false, neurotic, manufactured problems, they will never come to face the truly important crises of life. They will live without integrity or courage. Honest ignorance is one thing, though scarcely admirable. Avoidance can never simulate the bliss of ignorance, although it seems that people will try.

If avoidance is one problem in coping with the world, another is humanity's desperate need for control. Allen consistently pokes fun at every attempt to come to a philosophically consistent approach to the human dilemma. Zelig, the human chameleon who changes his appearance to fit in with any group of people (an exaggerated form of altering one's personality in order to be accepted), finds himself analyzed by various groups. Marxists try to use him. Americans see him as a kind of

¹⁰"Death (A Play)," Without Feathers (New York: Random House, 1975) p. 67.

238 - Woody Allen's Theological Imagination

Horatio Alger. To the Jewish community, he reflects the experience of assimilation into American society. French intellectuals "see in him a symbol for everything." The drive to explain is the drive to control.

Two apocryphal stories of his experiences at New York University reveal his own view of philosophy. On his final in Existential Philosophy, he is faced with ten questions. He cannot answer even one. He leaves them all blank. For his efforts, he receives a "100."¹¹ On another occasion, "I cheated on my Metaphysics final. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me."¹² For this, he is expelled from the university.

Allen consistently resists any "answers," and he subverts, through a comic reductio absurdum, all attempts to provide them. Zelig is told by a doctor that he has a tumor and may die in a few weeks. Ironically, the doctor dies instead. In "Sleeper," Miles finds that health foods are not really healthy, that science has failed him, and that politics and religion are dead ends. He tells a story of Socrates walking along in Athens when two youths from Sparta accost him for his money. "Socrates proved to them using simple logic that evil was merely ignorance of the truth.... And they broke his nose."¹³ The secret of life according to Ho Sin: "Never to yodel."¹⁴ Helmholtz, the great colleague of Freud, "proved that death is an acquired trait."¹⁵ Allen chronicles attempts to understand someone by psychoanalyzing him through his laundry lists.¹⁶ Elsewhere, a restaurant critic sees in the tossing of a salad a "statement" about the meaning of life.¹⁷

Trying to control life with explanations puts people in awkward positions. In "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy," the rationalist Leopold, whose arrogant logical positivism grates on everyone's nerves ("I did not create the cosmos. I merely explain it."), says, "What a pity that people require more for their existence than the wonderful world about them." The physician, Maxwell, replies, "It's not always so wonderful down at the hospital." Leopold consistently refutes the existence of anything beyond the physical world as fantasy. At the end of the film, when he dies, he is transformed into pure essence, the ultimate punishment for his philosophy.

One of Allen's greatest stories about the failure to control one's own life and one's environment is "The Lunatic's Tale."¹⁸ In this story, a formerly successful doctor, who once drove a Mercedes, wore expensive clothes, and was known for his wit and his backhand, is seen "roller skating unshaven down Broadway wearing a knapsack and a pinwheel hat." What caused his breakdown? He was in love with two women, one

¹¹"Stardust Memories."

¹²"The Nightclub Years."

¹³"God (A Play)," Without Feathers, p. 164.

¹⁴"Fabulous Tales and Mythical Beasts," Without Feathers, p. 181.

¹⁵"Conversations with Helmholtz," Getting Even, p. 85.

¹⁶"The Metterling Lists," Getting Even.

¹⁷"Febrizio's: Criticism and Response," Side Effects.

¹⁸Side Effects, pp. 71-78.

239 - Woody Allen's Theological Imagination

brilliant and reasonably attractive, the other the most beautiful woman he could imagine. A brain surgeon, he performed a transplant to put the brilliant brain into the perfect body. After successful surgery, he married the woman, then fell helplessly in love with a moderately attractive and not-too-intelligent airline stewardess. Hence his breakdown.

Not satisfied with undermining every philosophical, religious and psychological attempt to explain the world, Allen subverts even the grounds on which their claims are made. Metterling attends "a production of Oedipus, from which Freud had to be carried out in a cold sweat." Even Freud can be convicted of projection.

II

For Woody Allen, as for Sartre, there is "no exit" from the conundrum. Like Sandy Bates on the train, Allen senses that there must be something else, some other possibility. But we cannot get there. We are caught.

"Broadway Danny Rose" tries to convince the cynical Tina of the importance of guilt. After all, his rabbi told him that we are "all guilty in the eyes of God."

Tina: You believe in God?

Danny: No, but I feel guilt about it.

There is no God, but there is guilt because of God. There is guilt with no possibility of forgiveness. A priest visits a man about to be executed. The man asks the priest if there is time to convert, and the priest replies, "This time of year, I think most of your major faiths are filled.... Probably the best I could do on such short notice is maybe make a call and get you into something Hindu." Even for that, he will need a passport photo.¹⁹ Under hypnosis, Zelig recalls an event from his childhood. At the age of twelve, he asks a rabbi about the meaning of life. The rabbi tells him everything, but in Hebrew, and Zelig does not understand Hebrew. Then the rabbi wants Zelig to pay him $600 for Hebrew lessons. Every possibility has some kind of catch. And the catch locks the door.

Even death plays a major role in seeing to it that there are no exits from life. Throughout Allen's works, there are many references to what happens after death:

"What happens after we die? Is there a hell? Is there a God? Do we live again? All right, let me ask one key question: Are there girls?"

"I don't believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear."

On reincarnation: "anything's possible, but it's hard to imagine if a man is president of a big corporation in his life, that he'll wind up a chipmunk."

¹⁹"The Condemned," Side Effects, P. 15.

240 - Woody Allen's Theological Imagination

Perhaps there will be an afterlife, "but no one will know where it's being held."²⁰

Boris confronts Sonia in "Love and Death" with his anxiety about the meaning of life and the existence of God:

Boris: What if there is no God? ... What if we're just a bunch of absurd people who are running around with no rhyme or reason?

Sonia: But if there is no God, then life has no meaning. Why go on living? Why not just commit suicide?

Boris: Well, let's not get hysterical! I could be wrong. I'd hate to blow my brains out and then read in the papers they found something.

Death is no exit. Certainty is no exit. Not even the anti-certainty of atheism is an exit. Sonia tells a companion near the end of the film, "To love is to suffer. Not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer." And when one turns to desperation? Allen describes a time when he attempted suicide "by wetting my nose and inserting it into the light socket. Unfortunately, there was a short in the wiring, and I merely caromed off the icebox."²¹ Even his act of desperation fails.

III

Given this view of the world, it is understandable that Allen pokes so much fun at religious people, practices, prejudices, and platitudes. Some of this is merely superficial; the comedian's goal is laughter, sometimes for its own sake. But even what seems superficial often leaves a serious after-taste.

He tells the story of how he was approached to do an advertisement for a vodka company. In the course of the phone conversation, he explains with dignity that he does not do commercials especially for a product he does not believe in. When he is told that they are offering $50,000, he says, "Let me put Mr. Allen on the phone." He seeks out his rabbi for spiritual counsel, who supports his decision for personal integrity. Sometime later, as he is watching television, his rabbi appears in the commercial he was asked to make.²²

Two priests in "Love and Death" fare little better. Fr. Andre, elderly and wise, advises sex with twelve-year-old blondes to solve Boris' depression. Fr. Nikolai ("always dressed in black with a black beard; for years I thought he was an Italian widow"), when asked about Jews, produces sketches of the Russian Jew, with horns, and the German Jew, with stripes. A similar picture of ineffectiveness, narrow prejudice, and repression characterizes the priest in "Everything You Always Wanted

²⁰"Love and Death"; "Conversations with Helmholtz," Getting Even, p. 90; "Death (A Play)," Without Feathers, p. 78; and "Early Essays," Without Feathers, p. 102.

²¹"Selections from the Allen Notebooks." Without Feathers, p. 4.

²²"The Nightclub Years."

241 - Woody Allen's Theological Imagination

to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask." Here, in a scene set in a man's brain, the priest is discovered in the conscience department where he has tampered with the conscience's normal functioning. The priest is repressed and repressive. The priest in a television commercial in "Bananas," on the other hand, is hardly that. Almost worse, this priest tries to sell "New Testament Cigarettes," saying, "I smoke them; (gesturing upwards) He smokes them."

In "Sleeper," Allen pokes fun at Billy Graham: "He knew God personally. He picked out his wardrobe. They used to go out on double dates together. They were romantically linked for awhile." He also tells the story of two religious leaders of questionable repute: a fifteenyear-old Maharishi sues Rev. Ding over which one is really God and therefore entitled to free passes to a theater. Both gurus are arrested before they can escape to Nirvana, Mexico.²³ Again, in "Sleeper," Miles receives absolution from a computer. In "Take the Money and Run," Virgil Starkwell's father proudly recalls that he "tried to beat God" into his son and feels like a failure because he had no success. In "Manhattan," Isaac laments that, because he has quit his job, he will not be able to send as much money to his father. Because of this, his father will not get as good a seat in the synagogue and will have to be farther away from God.

Religious and philosophical platitudes are seen in an embarrassingly foolish light in Allen's work. Sonia assures Boris, in "Love and Death," that people are made, in God's image.

Boris: Do you think He wears glasses?

Sonia: Not with those frames.

This is merely a harmless diversion. But in "Notes from the Overfed," a misunderstanding of dogma has tragic and ridiculous consequences when filtered through a distorted mind.

If God is everywhere, I had concluded, then He is in food. Therefore, the more I ate the godlier I would become.... In six months, I was the holiest of holies, with a heart entirely devoted to my prayers and a stomach that crossed the state line by itself.... To reduce would have been the greatest folly, even a sin!"²⁴

Two of the darkest observations that Allen makes about religious platitudes come in quick succession in the film "Love and Death." As he looks out at the battlefield at thousands of dead bodies, one of Boris' cohorts remarks: "God is testing us." Boris responds, "If He's going to test us, why doesn't He give us a written?" Allen justly attacks the appalling complacency involved in using such notions of a rational universe to explain away awesome tragedy. Temptations to offer explanations to every tragedy as a part of God's plan plague religious traditions. Shortly after this affront to human dignity, as Boris is

²³"Nefarious Times We Live In," Side Effects, p. 88.

²⁴"Notes from the Overfed," Getting Even, p. 69.

242 - Woody Allen's Theological Imagination

digging graves, a priest remarks, "Mercifully, God was on our side." Again, Boris cannot let this ridiculous, horrible platitude linger: "Yeah. I'm sure things could have gone a lot worse if He wasn't. It might have rained." Cliches, empty words, especially when stamped with a religion's seal of approval, are enemies of the human race.

IV

Again and again, despite being put off by mindless religious and philosophical trivia, Allen pursues God, or at least the idea of God. lie yearns to have his questions answered, even if the extra- terrestrials fail him. Some of his crucial questions about God pertain to God's power and to human perceptions of that power. When Allen is called upon to play God as an actor in a couple of instances, he discovers that he does not have "a good voice for God."²⁵ Another time he resorts to "method acting," which means that he goes around New York in a blue suit, giving big tips to cab drivers, and forgiving people "because HE would have."²⁶

In Allen's version of the story of Abraham and Isaac, Abraham is certain that he has heard God because "it was a deep, resonant voice, well-modulated, and nobody in the desert can get a rumble in it like that." Later, when Abraham is embarrassed that he did not get God's little joke, he asks if his willingness to sacrifice his son does not prove his faithfulness, only to be told by God, "It proves that some men will follow any order no matter how asinine as long as it comes from a resonant, well-modulated voice."²⁷

One of the recurring themes in "Love and Death" is Boris' quest to receive some kind of sign from God: "If I could see a miracle, just one miracle. If I could see a burning bush, or the seas part, or my Uncle Sasha pick up a check." Or again, "if only God would give me some sign. If He would just speak to me once, anything, one sentence, two words. If He would just cough." Near the end of the film, when he finally sees an angel of God who tells him that he will be saved, he responds with the kind of trust one would expect of one who had been frustrated and insecure for so long: "I shall walk through the valley of the shadow of death. In fact, now that I think of it, I shall run through the valley of the shadow of death because you get out of the valley quicker that way." Relieved and hopeful because of God's promise and the angel's appearance, it still seems wise to take advantage of the situation quickly and not trust that such a good thing will last.

In addition to craving signs from God, Allen also craves justice. A proverb from "The Scrolls" says, "My Lord, my Lord! What hast thou done lately ?"²⁸ One is reminded of the Book of Judges when an angel comes to Gideon in the midst of the oppression under the Midianites.

²⁵"Stardust Memories."

²⁶"The Nightclub Years."

²⁷"The Scrolls," Without Feathers, pp. 23-24.

²⁸Ibid., p. 25.

243 - Woody Allen's Theological Imagination

Gideon says to the angel, "If the Lord is with us, why then has all this befallen us?" (Judges 6:13), and then goes on to ask why God does not do all the good things God used to do. According to Allen, a rabbi tells a detective seeking God, "We're the chosen people. He takes best care of us of all His children, which I'd like to someday discuss with Him."²⁹ And a man whose relationships have failed wonders if he is "guilty of hubris. A man who has never thought of himself in an order higher than rodent, nailed for hubris?"³⁰

The failure of either God's justice or God's power, or both, come together in two of Allen's works, "Love and Death" and "God," After Boris has his vision of the angel, he is still executed and concludes that he has been "screwed." At the end of "God," the script states that, in order to save the messenger Diabetes, "Zeus, Father of the Gods, descends dramatically from on high and, brandishing his thunderbolts, brings salvation to a grateful but impotent group of mortals." Unfortunately, when the play is performed, Zeus fails to save Diabetes from execution because the machine that is supposed to lower the actor playing Zeus gets stuck and the lowering wire strangles him. "God is dead." So the actors, like the rest of us, are told to "ad-lib the ending."³¹

The questions of God's power and justice converge in the issue of theodicy. Allen's consuming questions about suffering are central to how, if ever, he will resolve his questions about God. Although, in a moment of romantic feelings, Isaac tells his adolescent lover, Tracy, that she is "God's answer to Job,"³² he cannot let the question rest with that. Elsewhere, a man argues with his uncle that if there is a God, "Why is there poverty and baldness?"³³

Allen's fullest treatment of the question comes in his version of the story of Job. Among Job's hardships, God

slew a tenth part of Job's kine and Job calleth out: "Why dost thou slay my kine? Kine are hard to come by. Now I am short kine and I'm not even sure what kine are." ...And when Job's wife saw this she wept and the Lord sent an angel of mercy who anointed her head with a polo mallet, and of the ten plagues, the Lord sent one through six, inclusive.³⁴

Later, there is this final confrontation when God speaks to Job in a way similar to that in the biblical story:

"Must I who created heaven and earth explain my ways to thee? What hath thou created that thou doth dare question me?"

"That's no answer," Job said.... Then Job fell to his knees and cried out to the Lord, "Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Thou hast a good job. Don't blow it."³⁵

²⁹"Mr. Big," Getting Even, p. 104.

³⁰"Retribution," Side Effects, p. 145. 3

³¹"God (A Play)," Without Feathers, pp. 141, 173-75.

³²"Manhattan."

³³"Notes from the Overfed," Getting Even, p. 67.

³⁴"The Scrolls," Without Feathers, p. 22.

³⁵Ibid.

244 - Woody Allen's Theological Imagination

As Allen's Job rightly asserts, God did not give an answer. There is no adequate answer in the Book of Job other than God's awesome presence. But, for Allen, that is not enough. There are no answers to human suffering. Where does that leave God in his theology?

In "Mr. Big," a detective is employed to search for God, a. k. a. Mr. Big. Near the end, he hears that there is no Mr. Big: "It's a syndicate. Mostly Sicilian. It's international. But there is no actual head. Except maybe the Pope." Later he finds that God has been murdered by an existentialist.³⁶ The play, "God," offers a different answer. Diabetes is the messenger assigned the task of answering the king's "question of questions. Is there a god?" Since his life depends on giving a hopeful answer, Diabetes thinks it over for a moment and assumes that "yes" will make the king happy. But as it turns out, this only upsets the king who believes that he will be judged for his sins and doomed for eternity.³⁷ The first answer: God is dead. The second: God is alive but that may not be such a good thing.

Finally, there is the answer in "Love and Death," no more conclusive than these two, but more profound and probably closer to Allen's real position. Facing the audience, a man who was promised that he would be saved, only to be executed on time because God did not come through, says, "The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter. If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that He's evil. The worst you can say about Him is that basically He's an underachiever."

V

What is one to do? Where can one turn? What paths might one take?

Mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.³⁸

I haven't seen my analyst in two hundred years. He was a strict Freudian. And if I'd been going all this time I'd probably almost be cured by now.³⁹

Do you think there's any difference whether we live under the Czar or Napoleon? They're both crooks. The Czar's a little taller.⁴⁰

Often, it seems, the world of no exit and the underachieving God offers little hope of redemption. Analysis might cure a person after 200 years. Political solutions elude the world in which leaders seek power to glorify themselves, The two paths laid before us make it hard to discern the right decision. Political solutions are never really solutions in Allen's work. In the film, "Bananas," on the occasion of a successful revolution in the Latin

³⁶"Mr. Big" Getting Even, pp. 105-109.

³⁷"God (A Play)," Without Feathers, p. 170-72.

³⁸"My Speech to the Graduates," Side Effects, p. 57.

³⁹"Sleeper."

⁴⁰"Love and Death."

245 - Woody Allen's Theological Imagination

American nation of San Marcos, the new leader declares all children under the age of sixteen officially sixteen years old. The national language will be Swedish, and each citizen's underwear is to be changed each half-hour and worn on the outside for easier inspection. In "Sleeper," after the Leader's nose (all that is left of him after a moderately successful assassination attempt) is stolen as a result of the brilliant planning of the underground leader Erno, Miles Monroe declares that soon it will be time to steal Erno's nose. Elsewhere, a Latin American revolution ends with the new regime declaring a divine monarchy.⁴¹ In "Love and Death," Boris' desire to know what Russia will win by killing thousands of Frenchmen is never satisfied. Political solutions are impossible, because of human nature.

Even hopes for personal liberation meet with frustration. In "The Purple Rose of Cairo," Cecelia lives in the midst of oppression. She holds down a job as a waitress during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Married to a louse who drinks, womanizes, and never tries to get work, she is expected to wait hand and foot on him in return for all he does for her. Cecelia's one source of joy is going to the movies. They offer her a chance to escape. When she sits there, she hears Fred Astaire sing "Cheek to Cheek" (with the lyrics, "I'm in heaven"). Tom Baxter, a character from a movie she has seen several times, actually leaves the screen in his search for real life to join her. She falls in love with him, because he is perfect "but fictitious." Even after a fist fight with her husband, there is no blood on his face and not a single hair is out of place. The actor who plays Baxter, Gil Shepherd, also arrives on the scene, the dreammaker trying to round up the wandering dream. Baxter returns to the screen, spurned by Cecelia in favor of Shepherd. But Shepherd returns to Hollywood to project dreams onto the screen for others, leaving her hopeless. Cecelia is left to watch still another movie, once again in temporary relief from the pain of life. In the end, she hears Fred Astaire sing "I'm in heaven" while she sits in hell. Personal liberation is sheer fantasy.

Fantasy of another kind makes false promises to Andrew and Ariel in "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy." Years before, they had passed up the opportunity to make love together. Upon meeting again, they share the impression that if they had not missed that opportunity their lives would now be totally different-less filled with frustration and forboding. But when they do have sex, they merely "bull their way through it." Their past dream anticipated no real liberation.

But there is a kind of fantasy that Allen seems to find at least somewhat promising. We see it in "Play It Again, Sam." Throughout the film, Allan Felix is in dialogue with his idol, Humphrey Bogart. At first, he can identify only with Bogart's toughness and independence, which he cannot hope to emulate successfully. But later, he sees through the tough exterior of Bogart's character to his vulnerable interior and

⁴¹"Viva Vargas," Getting Even, p. 98.

246 - Woody Allen's Theological Imagination

realizes that he, like Bogart, is "short enough and ugly enough" to succeed on his own. Instead of an empty fantasy, "Play It Again, Sam" offers images for a new mode of self-understanding, images of strength through weakness, glory through humility, and self-love through selfsacrifice. The vision liberates precisely because it does not sweep us off our collective feet or take us out of the world. It frees us to be ourselves.

Allan is somehow able to see through Bogart's tough exterior, and participates in his own liberation. Cecelia never gets past the glitter. She waits passively to be saved. For her, there is no movement from fantasy to reality. Her dreams leave her in the same place they find her. But Allan's dreams empower him to change his life. Is it possible that there is some exit after all?

Zelig's alienation, caused by his craving to be liked, seems incurable. Only the "love of one woman" changes his life, liberates him from his compulsive need to be bidden in the crowd, and frees him to become himself. Other moments of liberation also appear in Allen's films. Even though Tom Baxter fails to liberate Cecelia, his sincere innocence succeeds in reaching out to a group of prostitutes as he touches their humanity in a unique way. Even though Andrew's dream of freedom from frustration through a new relationship with Ariel fails, his wife finds her "curse" lifted when her infidelity is revealed openly. Even though Boris is executed in "Love and Death," he dances down the road with Death as the film ends.

Allen has no illusions about the ease with which one might be set free from political, psychological, or spiritual misery. But he does reveal possibilities, even though they may be ambiguous. At the end of "Manhattan," Isaac decides that he wants Tracy, his teenaged lover, even though he had rejected her coldly for a woman nearer his age. The moment he arrives, Tracy tells him that she is leaving for London as he had encouraged her in the past. Isaac tries to change her mind but fails, finally heeding her plea to allow her to be free. The changing expressions on his face leave the viewer in some doubt as to whether he really accepts her liberation. But then a smile passes across his face for just a moment. He seems to.

Liberation is somehow possible in Allen's world, perhaps only because nothing can be counted on or counted out, not even the lack of an exit. So, in "Death Knocks," Nat tells Death, that most fearsome of figures, "I thought you'd be ... uh ... taller."⁴² But if liberation is a possibility, an ethics of some sort is an absolute necessity.

"Manhattan" opens with a play on Camus' The Fall. Isaac singles out courage as the single most important human virtue: "If four of us are walking over a bridge and someone is drowning in icy water, would someone have the courage to save the person? ... I can't swim so I never have to face it." He is concerned throughout the film with a "lack of individual integrity." When his friend accuses him of being self

⁴²"Death Knocks," Getting Even, p. 40.

247 - Woody Allen's Theological Imagination

righteous, saying, "You think you're God," Isaac retorts, "I gotta model myself after someone!" Yet, in his relationship with Tracy, he is clearly the oppressor who does not like it when she gets "too mature." In the end, when she tells him how much he hurt her, he can only say that it was not intentional. He still does not accept responsibility for his actions. His ambivalent acceptance of her move to London is the best he can do-and perhaps that is not too bad.

"Broadway Danny Rose" reveals Allen at his most optimistic. Danny's life is guided by simple, positive principles of behavior ("acceptance, forgiveness, and love") passed on by the wisdom of his Uncle Sidney, though, like Rose, in "Interiors," he may not know why he believes in them. Rose is asked, "How do you know what's good?" She answers, "You just don't squeal." There are some things that you just know.

What Danny Rose knows is that all business relationships are also personal. As an agent, his compassion leads him to pick the worst acts in show business: a one-legged tap dancer, a one-armed juggler, a blind xylophone player, a parrot that sings "I Gotta Be Me." The only act he will not work with is a stuttering ventriloquist, though Danny later finds a way to help even him. His reward for such goodness? When his acts become famous, they leave him. As the story goes on, he is continually the victim of undeserved bad fortune. People are out to kill him even though he has done nothing. He risks his life for Lou Canova, the washed-up Italian singer, and Canova leaves him for another agent. Only in the end does Tina, the woman he met on an "adventure," return to him seeking his "acceptance, forgiveness, and love." And the local deli gives him the "greatest single honor" it can bestow by naming a sandwich after him.

In "God," after Zeus dies, the actors are told to ad-lib the ending. Woody Allen insists that our ad-libbing be done with compassion for others. An ethical life is possible, even necessary. Intellectual reflection often paralyzes many of his characters. Only an intuition, perhaps common sense, tells people how to live with integrity.

VI

"To you, I'm an atheist. To God, I'm the loyal opposition." This is where Allen, via Sandy Bates in "Stardust Memories," locates himself. There are three aspects to living as the loyal opposition: he must protest, he must question, he must live a moral life. His protest is long and loud against the sufferings of humanity-and against any religion that offers cheap answers to humanity's deepest questions, any religion that can look at tragedy complacently and say, "God is on our side" or "God is testing us." Such religion denigrates human life and yearning. The loyal opposition has the responsibility to reveal such corruption.

Allen comes out of the Jewish tradition which, from its scriptural roots, has poked and prodded the powerful. He turns this protest against a powerful God, saying "Thou hast a good job. Don't blow it." If you are

248 - Woody Allen's Theological Imagination

a powerful God, act like it and straighten things up! Again and again, human suffering and the omnipresence of death haunt him. He wants a God who will agonize and act with love in response to the human condition.

He raises questions about conventional religious and philosophical wisdom. Like Job, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and many Psalms, he refuses easy answers and cheap comfort. Wisdom in the Hebrew Bible comes from being faithful to one's experience and one's reflection on that experience. Allen insists that faith (if it is a possibility at all) arises from human experience, especially the experiences of suffering, absurdity, and mortality.

Rabbis argue with God. Allen carries on this tradition but from one step removed. He argues with the idea of God. In many ways, this distinction might be likened to that in the American black community between Gospel music and the Blues. Gospel music deals with life, its sufferings and aspirations, in relation to God. The Blues also deal with life, but leave God almost invisible in the background.

In the midst of his protest and his unanswered questions, Allen relies on wisdom again. Uncle Sidney's philosophy of life in "Broadway Danny Rose," like Proverbs, forges a way to live in a world that cannot be comprehended. Danny even finds that, in the end, rewards come to him. The more traditional, conventional wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible proclaims that the righteous will be blessed. Job and Qoheleth dispute that claim. In this one instance, Woody Allen sides with the more hopeful tradition. He concludes that people can live morally, with integrity, with humanity.

VII

What is the value of Woody Allen's theological imagination for those of religious conviction? On some occasions, he speaks through his characters to demean the importance of his own quest. He is "self-indulgent and pretentious";⁴³ he is told that his adolescent concern about God's silence only "dignifies your own psychological and-sexual hangups by attaching them to grandiose philosophical issues";⁴⁴ an ex-wife's book says, "he had complaints about life but never any solutions.... In his most private moments, he spoke of his fear of death which he elevated to tragic heights when in fact it was mere narcissism."⁴⁵ In spite of these doubts, he makes some important contributions. He reminds us of the limits of human understanding. He reminds us that revelation often partakes simultaneously of hiddenness.

Thomas Merton would have appreciated Allen's deep sense of the absurdity of life, and his sense of humor about it. According to Merton, it is only when the apparent absurdity of life is faced in all truth that faith really becomes possible. Otherwise, faith tends to be a kind of diversion, a

⁴³"Stardust Memories."

⁴⁴"Manhattan."

⁴⁵Ibid.

249 - Woody Allen's Theological Imagination

spiritual amusement, in which one gathers up accepted, conventional formulas and arranges them in [the] approved mental patterns, without bothering to investigate their meaning, or asking if they have any practical consequences in one's life.⁴⁶

Woody Allen and Thomas Merton share an abhorrence of religion or philosophy that makes sense only "on paper."

It would be foolish to say Allen's works function to bring the world to faith in God. But by setting before our eyes something of the absurdity of life, he does make faith in God, where it exists, more faithful to human experience-truly an appropriate act of the "loyal opposition."

Allen does not stand alone in considering God an underachiever. In fact, this has been one of the great insights of both Jewish and Christian tradition as one ponders Israel's defeats and exiles, Judaism's suffering of oppression, pogroms, and holocaust, and the Jerusalem career of Christianity's Messiah. It bears noting that the figure who redeems Allan Felix is a Humphrey Bogart who is short and ugly. Perhaps the power of redemption, the power to liberate, comes not from Zeus descending onto the stage to intervene but through the power of love that enters into the world in vulnerability. That is a different kind of power, and a very different kind of God.

⁴⁶Thomas Merton, Disputed Questions (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1960), p. 166.