Comedy from Terror, A Sweet Melancholy

Rating: 9/10 (23 April 2006)

The feeling in that ending scene, the irony of his casual attitude. He says, "It was great to see Annie." The feeling inside him that motivates that statement is closer to the opposite of the literal meaning of those words. It wasn't great to see Annie. It was a reminder of all that has been lost, that he has lost, that it did not all turn out okay, that the impossibility of love is no longer a terrifying nightmare of skepticism, that it is actually the truth. All of Allen's jokes come from that terror, that terror that after all, in the end, life, from the widest and most real perspective, is empty, and that meaning is thin and contingent and constructed, rather than intrinsic and independently valid. Life is divided into the terrible and miserableÂ…if you're miserable you should be grateful that you're not terrible.