Readers Write In #545: A Woody Allen fan rant

By G Waugh

There may be many reasons to admire a film maker like Woody Allen. You can call him the funniest man you have come across in the movies, or you can talk about the variety in his oeuvre or you can talk about his profound dialogue or share some of his Nietzschean views of life with him. Similarly, when I had to explain to one of my friends why I keep referring to his film whenever I am talking about myself, I realized that this guy, on quite a few occasions, portrays ‘me’ in his movies altering the premise alone each time. The realization, frankly was not an epiphany, this was something I had known all along or otherwise I would not have been following him like I had been following my second-floor petite, unmarried neighbor.

If you may examine Allen’s art, many may concur as to the view that he speaks about the unspeakable in almost all of his movies. This is not something, in my opinion that distinguishes Allen. He, through his characters speaks about things that you would not confess to even yourself, never mind sharing it outside. A movie may talk about the issue of say, erectile dysfunction, and this belongs to the ‘unspeakable’ category, no doubt. If you have such a problem, you can tell a friend about it, someone whom you believe will empathise, not sympathize, with you and genuinely ponder about helping you from your perspective. The unspeakable can be speakable sometimes.

But Allen does not confine himself to that. He talks about things that might be too huge to yourself but, of negligible value to others. You may try telling people about it and you can be sure that they will close the topic when your coffee cup empties up. To elaborate, it will be about things even you might not be sure of its size and gravity and may manage to dismiss it whenever it crops up in your mind on a few occasions. But when you go along assured that the demon has been done away with, you will, all of a sudden, find it knocking the surface from inside, trying to emerge out in all its menacing fullness.

I, personally, used to have a strong delusion that I had a protruding belly in spite of being disproved on a lot of times during frequent visits to the mirror-room, sorry the restroom. I have introduced my friends a lot of times to the topic of my ‘assumed obesity’ and each time the discussion had not lasted three sentences, and they, in the end, were all wonderful reassurances of my passable fitness. I have on a lot of times managed to overcome my delusion and stay untroubled for weeks and months. But I am sure that the demon lurks and is biding its time to unfetter itself and form before me an image of myself, that is no less grotesque than the deformed villains in the movie ‘I’. You may call it a psychological condition and refer me to a therapist, but I am sure many of you have problems like this that you think they are so exclusively yours and yours alone, and that no soul in this world has time to listen to your woes.The problem might be so insignificant and specific to you but none can explain why such an apparent triviality is so shattering to you alone. If you are able to relate, welcome to AllenTown.

Allen played a hypochondriac in his celebrated ‘Hannah and his Sisters’ and he suffers, in reality from minor hearing loss. Some colleague of him, as a passing remark tells him that he knew a friend who died due to a brain tumor that originated from hearing loss. Allen begins running from one hospital to another, loses sleep over it and counts every minute of days and nights till the moment when his test reports turn up, obliterating his delusions finally. But all along his painful journey, no friend of his has an ear for his complaint, as he desperately yearns for sympathy. It is nobody’s fault to dismiss the ridiculous notion that a hearing loss could possibly be triggered by a brain tumor. His other colleagues are not able to sense why this man is deeply worried about his simple condition.

Allen in ‘Manhattan’ played a writer, who is deeply in love with his wife, who ends up divorcing him to become a lesbian only to another woman. He is continually tormented by people and himself by the thought that a man’s dignity, his essential life source, cannot be butchered more brutally than this way.

I came across an old interview of Allen when he is asked why he thought life was tragic. He spoke about a typewriter whose color ribbon he could not change even after a number of unsuccessful attempts, something everyone can do within minutes. He said he was deeply distressed about it. He wanted people to do it for him but did not ask in order to maintain his dignity. What a sad man!

When I was seeing ‘Hannah and his sisters’ with a friend, he was literally rolling on the floor laughing at Allen’s struggle with himself with regard to his hearing condition, while I couldn’t help turning misty eyed at Allen’s plight and sneering at my friend’s ruthlessness, wondering helplessly all the while, ‘Why is the world so cruel?’

Written in 2015.