Review of Love and Death (2013) by Chad N — 17 Dec 2005

Hands almost down, the smartest, funniest comedy I have ever seen. I'll need to see how it stands up to repeat viewings before all hands can be all the way down. Reminiscent of "Duck Soup" and Groucho Marx at his best, it'a perfect blend of slapstick and high-brow humor that makes fun of intellectuals by being intellectual. What other director could discuss the existence of God or mortality in one scene, and in the next have the lead character being seduced and standing face to er, face, with a buxom Russian countess. No one could pull this off today and not make it into an absolute joke.

The story is set during the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. Allen plays Boris, who is the exact character Allen plays in all his other films, except here he's a 19th century Russian serf who is forced to fight for his country. As it turns out, he becomes a decorated war hero. But soon after, he is forced to play a little game of Russian roulette, because he's offended the lover of the Countess. His real goal, though, is to marry his cousin, Sonja (Diane Keaton). Knowing that Boris will die in the duel, she promises to marry him should he survive. Well, he does. But just as she begins to finally fall in love with him, the war is about to start up again. So Boris and Sonja hatch a plan to assasinate Napoleon.

This film is one of Allen's personal favorites and one of the most overlooked. He uses the setting to spoof all things Russian- big, burly men, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky- Igmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal," "Persona," and lots of philosophical mumbo-jumbo. Intellectualism, for Allen, is a humorous and poor substitute for sex. Echoing a scene that would later be redone in his "Manhattan," Diane Keaton stops a philosophical conversation by saying they should stop talking about sex all the time.

This is one of the few "surprises" of my extensive film watching this year. It couldn't have been done better or been a better fit to my sense of humor. Something rarely achieved, it's personally a wholly satisfying, entertaining movie.