Woody Allen about meaning and truth of life on Earth

Dick & Woody get semi-metaphysical

I have spent alot of time talking about Woody Allen films on this blog and looking at his worldview. He has a hopeless, meaningless, nihilistic worldview that believes we are going to turn to dust and there is no afterlife. Even though he has this view he has taken the opportunity to look at the weaknesses of his own secular view. I salute him for doing that. That is why I have returned to his work over and over and presented my own Christian worldview as an alternative.

My interest in Woody Allen is so great that I have a “Woody Wednesday” on my blog www.thedailyhatch.org every week. Also I have done over 30 posts on the historical characters mentioned in his film “Midnight in Paris.” (Salvador Dali, Ernest Hemingway,T.S.Elliot,  Cole Porter,Paul Gauguin,  Luis Bunuel, and Pablo Picasso were just a few of the characters.)

The Wall Street Journal reported a few days ago:

Stockholm would be an interesting choice, being that it’s where your hero Ingmar Bergman is from. Do you think it would be intimidating to make a movie there?

I would like to make a film there. And I wonder if it would be suddenly like I fell victim to the Swedish mystique and I wanted to make a film about the lack of communication between human beings or the absence of God. Or maybe I would just make a funny film.

Some say your view is that life is pointless, and others say you’re a romantic realist who believes in being true to yourself. Which is it?

I think that’s the best you can do, but the true situation is a hopeless one because nothing does last. If we reduce it absurdly for a moment, you know the sun will burn out. You know the universe is falling apart at a fantastically accelerating rate and that at some point there won’t be anything at all. So whether you are Shakespeare or Beethoven or Michelangelo, your stuff’s not going to last. So, given that, even if you were immortal, that time is going to come. Of course, you have to deal with a much more critical problem, which is that you’re not going to last microscopically close to that. So, nothing does last. You do your things. One day some guy wakes up and gets the Times and says, “Hey, Woody Allen died. He keeled over in the shower singing. So, where do you want to have lunch today?”

So, what do you do to distract yourself from these depressing thoughts? Knicks games? Or is that depressing, too?

The Knicks are one kind of distraction. For the two hours you’re at the Garden you’re only focused on that. I follow them. I go. I have been a season-ticket holder for many years. They have not been very exciting. It was a nice little flurry for a while but then [Jeremy Lin] got hurt, so we’ll see what happens next year. I am a big sports fan, baseball and basketball, everything. People will say to me, “Does it really matter if the Knicks beat the Celtics?” And I think to myself, “Well, it’s just as important as human existence.”

Really?

Really. It may not seem so, but if you step back and look they are equivalent. I’ve often thought that there’s a movie in two film directors. One makes these confrontational films that deal with these problems. The other one makes strictly escapist material. Which one is making the bigger contribution? You are living this terrible life. It’s hot. It’s sunny. The summertime is awful. Life is miserable. You duck into the movie house. It’s dark. It’s cold. It’s pleasurable. You watch Fred Astaire dance for an hour and a half. And it’s great. You can go out and face life, based on the refreshment factor. If you see the confrontational film, you have a different experience and it seems more substantive but I am not sure it does as much for you as the refreshment. A couple of laughs, a couple of dance numbers, and you forget all that garbage for an hour and a half. I hope I am not depressing you.

Related posts:

I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I have done over 30 posts on the historical characters mentioned in the film. Take a look below: