Sleepwalking Into a Mess

• Share

(2 of 2)

What has most vexed Allen's fans lately is the moral ignorance of an artist touted to find both passion and ambiguity in the characters he creates. Allen seems unaware even of the ironies, pathetic and comic, that would abound if he were to marry Soon-Yi and win custody of his kids: Soon-Yi would become the stepmother of her own siblings, and Mia would become Woody's mother-in-law. For most people, movies are simple and life is complex. For Allen, on recent evidence, it's the other way around.

What a pity that Allen the sagacious filmmaker doesn't have the ear of Allen the screwed-up philanderer. Because, if you had a friend in his predicament -- someone blind to the moral morass he had sleepwalked into -- Husbands and Wives is the movie you'd want him to see. It would open his eyes.