Review: Annie Hall

Seen 2/16/15

3/4

Although funny, intelligent and fascinating, I found Annie Hall to be characterized by an absence of pathos, and thus watching this movie was not an enjoyable experience for me. Overwhelming negative emotion is far more preferable to me than no emotion, whether experienced in the third or the first person, so I was simply depressed (in the most unfulfilled, meaningless sense of the mental state) by this film.

It is an overtly and self-consciously existentialist work; it discusses death, despair, disconnect, and other such things honestly, and searches for meaning in the human experience ("I quit smoking years ago." "What do you mean?" "Mean?......."). But what I found is that while I connect with the existentialist's search for meaning, and even respect part of the movement's conclusion that there is no cosmological significance to our lives' events, I am forever depressed by the notion of not finding personal meaning in the events of my life, especially with respect to relationships. Watching Woody Allen's character and his romantic other treat one another as if the universe's indifference manifests in them was difficult for me. I would probably claim to be in favor of the view that there is no objective significance to our actions and happenings, but the thought of treating another human being with that in mind is unfortunate and ugly. The same I can apply to hobbies and interests and other pursuits of mine. How I pass my time may not be significant to a deity or to the universe, by morality or by something else, but I can place meaning on it myself. I can be fulfilled by the things that I do, and I can perceive my life as meaningful.

Annie Hall doesn't do that. It deals in cold indifference. Absurdity. The arbitrary. There is neither good nor evil. I am fine with Woody Allen being an existentialist, and I am fine with him making movies that demonstrate the viewpoint that life is meaningless...he has my respect...but I just don't want to sit through that.