Witty Woody

Rating: 8/10 (23 March 2005)

Right off the bat, I personally melt with glee whenever someone manages to pay homage to Ingmar Bergman, particularly when it's done irreverently, so there was already one huge "plus" off the bat for Woody Allen's 1975 comedic masterpiece "Love and Death". Boris Grushenko (Allen) is the weakest and most cowardly brother in his Russian family. He falls in love with Sonja (Keaton), his "twice-removed" cousin who is his intellectual and spiritual equal, but is actually in love with one of Boris' brothers. When Boris is forced to go to war during the Napoleonic invasion of Russia, he still pines for Sonja, who in turn ends up marrying an elderly gentleman who she isn't in love with, but becomes the village tramp by sleeping with most of the men in it. Through an act of serendipity (he hides in a cannon and ends up killing a major figure on the enemy side) Boris becomes a decorated hero and marrying Sonja, whose husband has died. Together, the two plot to assassinate Napoleon in order to rid war from their country.
The plot summary sounds fairly straightforward, but of course, being a Woody Allen film, (particularly one of his 1970's films) it was utterly hilarious. It is so hard to describe why Allen's comedy is so endearing and successful, but I know that a big part of it is its intelligence  even when we are experiencing slapstick humor and seemingly lowbrow moments, there is still an enormous amount of cleverness to it. Allen peppers the film with homages to various Bergman films, which seem so arbitrary to anyone that doesn't know their source that it's almost like a delicious inside joke. Keaton and Allen are an amazing on screen couple who have such stunning intellectual chemistry that it kind of seems a shame he had to go through his whole Mia Farrow "phase" in film-making. (Though "Hannah and her Sisters" is probably his best film of the 80's) Granted, I am a Woody Allen fan, but I also know when he has made some crap films. Luckily, he didn't make any of those in the 1970's, and "Love and Death" in particular is one that should definitely be seen. Any film that contains the line, "Granted, I have a few eccentricities. I won't eat any food that begins with the letter F. Like chicken, for instance" is comedic gold. 8/10 --Shelly