The Meaning of Life (courtesy Woody Allen)

July 22, 2006

Movie critics tend to agree that Woody Allen’s Match Point is his best film in years.  It is a tale of rotten characters, striving to satisfy their greed and lust, all the while fearing that they may be so unlucky as to lose both.  Their universe is random, ruled by luck.  It is beyond comprehension that there might be a just and moral order guiding human life.  Seems like a box-office winner, right?

Rather than focus on Match Point, I’d like to turn back the clock to 1989, when Allen gave us another great film, Crimes and Misdemeanors.  In it, Allen forthrightly grapples with the question of whether this is a just and moral universe.  He seems to conclude that you can’t have meaning in life without God, but you can’t have God without guilt.  So, which do you choose:  God and meaning, or a universe empty of meaning and guilt?

Read Crimes, Misdemeanors & Injustice