Review of Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) by Paul Z — 18 Aug 2010

Martin Landau, an actor who has never before been in any of Woody Allen's films, plays the lead role, a very serious man portrayed in a very serious way, and carries one half of a this film with a strand of the story that deals with joltingly serious and darkly interpreted themes and scenes. He deals with guilt over an affair by having his adulterous lover killed when she becomes too obsessed and pivotal to the well-being of his life. Guilt upon guilt crushes him, but he must hide these feelings desperately from those around him who know him best, or at least they think they do. He is a dishonest man who lets the violent feelings of guilt effect him from the inside out, upon this realizing how little he'd stayed on the right side of the moral code even before this life-changing and life-ending decision.

This story is intercut with Woody Allen's half of the film, wherein he plays the role he always plays, a socially ungraceful, unhappily married artist, in this case a documentary filmmaker, who finds happiness in the company of another woman, whom he falls in love with. This half is played with a joltingly funny interpretation with Allen's tongue against his cheek. And though the story's following of his own character concentrates on the weaknesses of one's decadent decisions and the repercussions of them, it has moments of great laughter.

Is Allen's truly personal character study reflected more by the Martin Landau half? Does he see more of himself in the ophthalmologist who hides his true self from the world and follows through with such decisions like or perhaps comparable to murder? Allen draws such a heavy portrait of Landau and reverses film's atmosphere completely, intended to draw attention, when moving on with his own character's side of the story. Also, his side of the story is only really meant as symbolic, as a parallel. Could Allen be brilliantly disguising the true reflection of himself through writing by drawing the attention to Landau's stern and powerful screen time away from himself by using a point-driving spin on plot convention that involves drenching his side of the screen with the normal neurotic Woody Allen screen character and the wry hilarity that surrounds him to deflect from what is really a venting projection of the inner him? This is my theory. Essentially, Crimes and Misdemeanors is about life choices and the logic and emotion that battle each other and cloud one's actions.

Crimes and Misdemeanors is certainly not among my favorite Woody Allen movies, for it is not as moving or as hilarious to me as it is, I suspect, to him. That does not mean, though, that I don't find it very funny and very meaningful. Alan Alda is a definite highlight as a pompous, overbearingly self-centered and disgusting social archetype, many of his scenes providing the most laughs, especially when Allen shows him the rough cut of the documentary he's directed with him as the subject.