Since the beginning, one of the functions of the Michael and Us podcast has been to give

Luke and me a space to re-evaluate people

and ideas and cultural phenomena that were once important to us. This week we're talking

about 1989's Crimes and Misdemeanors, one of Allen's best films, which perfectly articulates

one of the central ideas of his long career. We live in a godless universe, which means that morality is up to us.

If I kill someone and get away with it, there is no one to punish me except myself, and if I'm

able to sweep the feelings of guilt under the rug, who's to know? You may call this a cynical

idea, but Alan would call it a realistic one. The idea has been central to

Alan's dramas. He investigated it further in Matchpoint, Cassandra's dream, and irrational man. His

comedies also grapple with a version of this idea, but from a somewhat different angle. In film after

film, Alan tells us that because there is no God and life is meaningless,

we must seek happiness wherever we can find it to distract ourselves from this cosmic horror.

At the end of Allen's 2009 film, Whatever Works, Larry David says to the camera,

whatever love you can get and give, whatever happiness you can filter provide,

every temporary measure of grace,

whatever works. In crimes and misdemeanors, Alan treats this idea with grave moral seriousness.

In real life, when news of Alan's affair with Mia Farrow's daughter became public,

Alan famously defended himself by quoting Emily Dickinson, The Heart Wants What It Wants.

Something that disquietes me about Alan's work as I get older is how his life reveals the

darker implications of his film's philosophy.

This is all to say that I think the film does present life as a choice between whether you want to be a good person or not.

And you might say, well, who's to say what defines a good person?

...